
Qass 
Book 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



/ Tenth Edition 

YOURSELF AND THE NEIGHBOURS (Scumas MacManus) 

Illustrated by Thomas Fogarty 

THE BALTIMORE SUN — Once in a great many years there is published a book that 

stands out so pre-eminently above the general run of books that it deserves to be classed among 

the masterpieces of a country's literature. Such a book is Seumas MacManus' Yourself and 

the Neighbottrs. 

THE LOS ANGELES TIMES — If Seumas MacManus is not taken to our bosom and 
cherished as a classic, then all signs by ivhich we estimate genius fail. 

George W. Cable says: — I may have read as good English — not often, however. But oh, 
when did any one ever read such darling Irish. Assuredly Seumas MacManus' is a master pen, 
and a joy to me which I mean to make permanent. 

Edwin Markham — I am struck by the freshness, the beauty, the poesy, of this, the best work 
Seutnas MacManus has ever done. 

Mark Sullivan — I have read Yourself and the Neighbours with the intensest interest line 

by line, and am ordering the rest of Seumas MacManus' books, anticipating the greatest delight 

Chief Justice of Canada, Sir Charles Fitzpatrick— When I finished Yourself and the Neigh- 

t)Ours I wanted to thank Seumas MacManus for giving me the key to so much of the humorous 

t'tie mystic, the tragic, that is the charm of the Irish people — 'may God bless them ! 

Wm. Marion Reedy, in the "Mirror" — It is the best, the very best, projection of Irish 
'Site fhat T can recall. It is better than Lover or Lever or Banim or Gerald Griffin- — and worth 
a wlderiiess of the works of George Moore. 

David Belasco — I wish I could express how truly delightful I found this book. It is so 
charming, fresh and quaintly humorous, and at the same time so pathetically tender, that I 
smiled and laughed and gulped "all in one breath." I wonder if Seumas MacManus realises 
how fine; this, book is? He is at his best in it. 

Jarnes Wnitcomb Riley — I read Yourself and the Neighbours with avidity — as I read every 
line of Seumas MacManus. 

Archbishop Ireland — It is a wonderfully beautiful book both in sentiment and diction. 
Archbishop Prendergast — Now that I have read it, every word, and many parts more than 
once, I w^ish to say that it is the most delightful book of its kind I ever read. It should be in 
the home of every one of our race the world over. 

Ru th McEnery Stuart — This book is a delight — and for so many qualities that I find them 
almost lost in the word "charm." Many times in my reading I found my eyes filling with 
tear^ — of keen delight and sympathy — and pride, too. This work is the real thing and as 
vital as Seumas MacManus' first touch, which made the world look his way. 

Bo ston Transcript — Few books to-day are written with such love and sympathy as is this 
one. S eumas MacManus has won, all over the world, a following of people whose hearts will 
never Iieave the hills of Donegal. 

Ex- -Gov. John K. Tener, of Pennsylvania — Already I have nearly finished this delightful — 
yes, de'iicious — book. When I got into the swing of it, I sang rather than read the pages. 

Ch:ancellor McCormick, University of Pittsburgh — I wonder whether Seumas MacManus him- 
self rea'lises what a fine piece of work he has here done. I '?;^^'■■^ any one tu speu<l an hour 
tfalldg this book and not rise from it a kinder, gentler, fine* '. ..- 'The world, when it conies 
to knov/ the book, will thank Seumas MacManus for it as I thank him. 

Ne-w York Times — Seumas MacManus here puts the soul of his race into language exquisite, 
now tei ise with passion, now shaken with mirth. He has art and knowledge and sympathy ; 
and he puts them all into this lovable book. 

Pre sident Chase, Bates College — This intensely interesting book helped me to understand, 
to appr eciate, to love, and to admire the Irish people to a deg:ree ihat has enriched my own 
mind, a nd made more tender my own heart. 
Price $: 2 (and 15c. postage). From THE IRISH PUBLISHING CO., Box 1300, New York City. 

IRELAND'S CASE (Seumas MacManus). Seventieth Thousand 
Bis hop Grimes (Syracuse) — This superb argument should echo throughout civilization. 
Th< ; Indiana Catholic — This is the most remarkable book ever written about Ireland. 
Price $1.50 (postage lOc). IRISH PUB. CO., Box 1300, New York City. 

THE RED POACHER (Seumas MacManus) 
Ne^ V York Sun — The most dramatic book and the best story-telling that MacManus has 
yet doni;. 

,rnw $1 ?5 (and lOc. postage). THE IRISH PUB. CO., Box 1300, Ncv YatV 



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BALLADS OF A COUNTRY M)Y 

The Poems of Seumas MacManus 

Fiona Macleod — ^What pleasure this book gave me, with its lilt fresh from the hillsides of 
Donegal, and its blithe spirit brave and glad, alike in storm and shine! I have looked into it 
again and again since first I read it, and never without pleasure, or the sudden sense of wind 
and air, and the singing heart. 

The Leader (San Francisco) — A book to cherish, to smile over, and weep over by turns, is 
"Ballads of a Country Boy." . . . We meet here all the characteristics that have made of 
Ireland a great and holy nation. . . . Seumas MacManus shares with Ethna Carbery her 
magnificent sensuousness of imagery, and haunting melody of versification. The poems of both 
stand for what is most distinctly national, and, in a literary way, most excelling, in recent Irish 

verse. • 

New Ireland Review — It would be hard to find a new volume of popular poetry which 
excites one's interest from beginning t(. end to the same degree as these simple ballads of 
Seumas MacManus. Here we have the joyful, the sorrowful, the beautiful — and we feel our 
hearts glow vith a deeper love of Ireland. 

Price $L2S (and 10c. postage). THE IRISH PUB. CO. 

A LAD OF THE O'FRIELS (Seumas MacManus) 

Fiona Macleod — An admirable piece of work, true to life, true in sentiment, true in touch, 
with vivid actuality and the bicath of romance, and a very real and appealing winsome cha';m- 
... it gave ine sincere and deep pleasure to read this delightful book. 

The Boston Transcript — This book is a landmark, showing the height of excellence to 
which the flood of fiction may rise. 

New Ireland Review — The poetry of Irish homely life has never been more faithfully and 
more touchingly portrayed than in this book. ... It is a powerful work. 

Irish Independent — Of all novels descriptive of Irish homely life which we h^ive read, 
"A Lad of the G'Friels" rings truest. One seems actually to see and hear his cliaracters 
as they speak. 

Punch — A charming book, sure of lasting fame and popularity. 

Price $1.90 (and 15c. postage). IRISH PUB. CO. 

DOCTOR KILGANNON (Seumas MacManus) 
The Overland Monthly says: — "This book has all the qualities that endeared the author's 
earlier works to the public. The rich Donegal humour is here, and the effervescing wi,t which 
Seumas MacManus possesses in unusual degree. "Doctor Kilgannon" falls little shorit of "A 
Lad of the O'Friels" in its richness of colouring and literary charm." 

Price $1.25 (and 10c. postage). \ 

LO AND BEHOLD YE (Seumas MacManus) } 

New York Sun — For sheer beauty, for rich humour, for Irish wit and action, f or high 
imagination, here is a volume worth while. 

New York Times — Such a book as this is a blessing to distraught humanity. 

Washington Star Inimitable and ensnaring — a maze of bewitching Irishry, woven^ by the 
incoiiiijaiable Seumas MacMat'is. 

Louisville Post — For wit and humour, for human feeling, for Irish gaiety and 6-.-ce, 
this book has rarely been equalled. 

Springfield Republican — This book of Seumas MacManus is a sheer unmitigated joy . Read 
it and catch the soul of the Irish, read it to find life sweet again, read it to laugh and grow young. 

The Catholic World — Here we have Seumas MacManus at his delicious best — higl i praise 
for even a good book. 

Price $2 (and 15c. postage). From THE IRISH PUB. CO. 



TOP O* THE MORNIN' (Seumas MacManus) 

New York Evening Post — Here Seumas MacManus is at his familiar best — and i 
whole gamut. 

Outlook — Abounding in raciness, true fancy, genuine humour, large-hearted human 

The Nation — Entirely delightful. 

America — Each story of these proves th?. author a master of his art. Pathos and 
flow from his pen, and blend naturally — a rar.; gift. 

Portland Express — On every page a laugh and a sigh. 

Salt Lake City Telegram — Here is a freshness and cheer like the dewy dawn in Ir 

Springfield Republican — Smiles and tears here elbow each other for room. 

Boston Transcript — Entirely captivating. 
Price t? CarS :5c. postage). From THE IRISH PUB. CO., Box 1300, New York 



uns his 
nature. 

humour 

;land. 
City. 



THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 



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l\ 



SOME OF THE SEUMAS MacMANUS BOOKS 

YOURSELF AND THE NEIGHBOURS (Tenth Edition) 

IRELAND'S CASE (Seventieth Thousand) 

A LAD OF THE O'FRIELS 

DONEGAL FAIRY STORIES 

BALLADS OF A COUNTRY BOY 

IN CHIMNEY CORNERS 

THE RED POACHER 

DR. KILGANNON 

TOP O' THE MORNIN* 

LO AND BEHOLD YE 

THE HARD-HEARTED MAN (A Play) 

WOMAN OF SEVEN SORROWS (A Play) 

Other Short Plays 

ETHNA CARBERY BOOKS 

THE FOUR WINDS OF EIRINN (Poems) 

New edition (20th), with Memoir by Seumas MacManus 
IN THE CELTIC PAST 
THE PASSIONATE HEARTS 

THE IRISH PUBLISHING CO., Box 1300, New York, N. Y. 



THE STORY OF THE 
IRISH RACE 

A Popular History of Ireland 



BY 
SEUMAS MacMANUS 

Assisted by Several Irish Scholars 



O wind-drifted Branch, lift your head to the sun, 
For the sap of new life in your veins hath begun, 
And a little young bud of the tenderest green 
Mine eyes through the snow and the sorrow have seen! 

O little green bud, break and blow into flower, 

Break and blow through the welcome of sunshine and shower; 

'Twas a long night and dreary you hid there forlorn, 

But how the cold hills wear the radiance of morn ! 

— Ethna Career y. 



Subscribers' Edition 




NEW YORK 

THE IRISH PUBLISHING CO. 

P. O. Box 1300 

1921 






Copyright, 1921, by Seumas MacManus 

All rights reserved 

Published October, 1921 



g)CI.A630478 

NOL'28 7 



-^o I 



This Book is Inscribed 

to the haloed memory of one who, ponder- 
ing the heroic records of her race, dedi- 
cated her life to ireland's holy cause, 
and in undying strains sang the glories 
the sorrows and radiant hopes of her land 

BELOVED 

Eire's Queen of Song, 
ETHNA CARBERY. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER p^^jg 

I. Early Colonisations 1 

II. The Tuatha De Danann 5 

III. The Milesians 7. 

IV. Some Notable Milesian Royalties 15 

V. Ireland in the Lore of the Ancients .... 19 

VI. Conor MacNessa ' 23 

VII. CUCHULLAIN 28 

VIII. Two First Century Leaders 36 

IX. Conn of the Hundred Battles 40 

X. CoRMAC MacArt 45 

XI. Tara 54 

XII. The Fairs 53 

XIII. FioNN and the Fian 64 

XIV. The Break of Ulster 74 

XV. NiALL OF the Nine Hostages 77 

XVI. Irish Invasions of Britain 84 

XVII. General Review of Pagan Ireland 90 

XVIII. Irish Christianity Before St. Patrick . . . .' 103 

XIX. St. Patrick IO9 

XX. The Brehon Laws 129 

XXI. St. Bridget 142 

XXII. Women in Ancient Ireland 151 

XXIII. COLM CiLLE 160 

XXIV. The Poets 176 

XXV. The Irish Kingdom of Scotland 192 

XXVI, The Centuries of the Saints 196 

XXVII. Learning in Ancient Ireland 212 

XXVIII. The Irish Missionaries Abroad [ 232 

XXIX. Irish Scholars Abroad 256 

XXX. The Vikings in Ireland 267 

XXXI. Hospitality in Ancient Ireland .....' 287 

XXXII. The Tribe 293 

XXXIII. Manner of Living in Ancient Ireland . . . 296 

XXXIV. Structural Antiquities 301 

XXXV. Various Arts of Ancient Ireland 307 "^ 

XXXVI. The English Invasion 319 

XXXVII. Norman and Gael 33 1 

XXXVI 1 1, Trade in Medieval Ireland * 340 

XXXIX. Learning in Medieval Ireland 346 

XL. The Geraldines ] 353 

XLI. Henry VIII's Policies * 362 

ix 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

XLII. Shane the Proud 368 

XLIII. Elizabeth Continues the Conquest .... 373 

XLIV. Red Hugh 379 

XLV. The Nine Years' War 385 

XLVI. Suppressing the Race 399 

XLVIL The Ulster Plantation 405 

XLVIII. The Rising of 1641 408 

XLIX. The War of the Forties 415 

L. Cromwell 422 

LI. The Cromwellian Settlement 428 

LI I. The Williamite Wars 436 

LIII. The Later Penal Laws 454 

LIV. "The Wild Geese" 470 

LV. The Suppression of Irish Trade 483 

LVI. The Volunteers . . . o 493 

LVII. Theobald Wolfe Tone 499 

LVIII, The United Irishmen 505 

LIX. The Rising of 1798 515 

LX. The Union 526 

LXI. Robert Emmet 532 

LXII. Daniel O'Connell 538 

LXI II. O'Connell the Idol 545 

LXIV. Catholic Emancipation 551 

LXV. O'Connell's Power and Popularity .... 560 

LXVI. Through the Thirties 567 

LXVII. The Great Repeal Fight 574 

LXVI II. The End of O'Connell 584 

LXIX. Young Ireland 590 

LXX. The Great Famine 602 

LXXI. The Fenians 611 

LXXII. Charles Stewart Parnell 621 

LXXIII. The Land Struggle Begins 631 

LXXIV. The Land League 636 

LXXV. The Ladies' Land League 644 

LXXVI. Fall of Parnell and of Parliamentarianism . . 659 

LXXVII. The Modern Literature of Ireland .... 669 

LXXVIII. Sinn Fein 684 

LXXIX. Easter Rising 691 

LXXX. The Last War? 706 

LXXXI. The Dawning 712 

An Honor-Roll 715 



THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

FOREWORD 

This is an attempt to sketch a rough and ready picture of the 
more prominent peaks that rise out of Ireland's past — the high 
spots in the story of our race. 

The story is developed with the object of interesting and in- 
forming the man who can not, or will not, afford the time to read 
studiously. Yet it is earnestly hoped that it may whet the appetites 
of many, and stimulate ihem to go browsing in broader and richer 
pastures — in anticipation of which there are set down, at ends of 
chapters or periods, titles of some of the more important books 
dealing with the subject just treated of. 

The writer was impelled to the compilation of this story of our 
race by the woeful lack of knowledge on the subject which he found 
in the four corners of America, among all classes of people, alike 
the intelligent and the ordinary. With the vast majority of Amer- 
ica's intellectual ones he found Ireland's past as obscure as the past 
of Borneo. On three occasions he was asked by educated women 
who were pillars in their Societies, Has Ireland got a history? 

To a large extent the blame for American ignorance of Ix*e- 
land's story rests upon the ignorance of our own exiles, and the 
children of those exiles. Were these possessed of a general knowl- 
edge of Ireland's past, and the proper pride that must come of 
that knowledge, the good Americans around them would catch in- 
formation by contagion. The writer hopes that even this crude 
compendium may put some of the necessary knowledge and pride in 
the minds and hearts of his people — and also the incentive to seek 
out and study the history of the country that endowed them with 
the rare riches, spiritual and mental, that characterises the far-wand- 
ered children, and children's children, of the Gael. 

Also it Is to be hoped that many of the general American public, 
ever sympathetic toward Ireland, may, through the aid of this 
rough record, graduate from a state of instinctive sympathy and 
love to the beginning of an intelligent one. 

In making this compilation, the political narrative common to 
all Irish histories is given briefly. But, non-political phases of our 
race's history — often far more important than the political, and 



xii FOREWORD 

usually omitted or only hinted at — are gone into more largely : such 
as the ancient customs, laws, learning, literature, scholars, teachers, 
saints, missionaries — and in more modern times the spiritual strug- 
gles and sufferings of our people. 

In spelling the ancient Irish proper names the Gaelic form is 
usually employed — except in cases where a modern form has been 
popularised. For sake of readers who know nothing of Irish pro- 
nunciation, the confusing aspirate has been, in most cases, omitted — 
except with g or c where the aspirate is, to English speakers, a 
help rather than a hindrance. The Gaelic reader will know where 
to supply the missing aspirates. 

For the inquiring reader's benefit it may be useful to quote here 
a passage from an article on The Ancient Language, History and 
Literature of Ireland, which Dr. Douglas Hyde kindly contributed 
for this volume — but which was unfortunately received too late for 
inclusion. 

Says Dr. Hyde : "The numerous Irish annals in which the skele- 
ton of Irish history is contained, are valuable and ancient. We 
have of course no outside testimony by which we can verify their 
statements, but there is abundance of internal testimony to show the 
accuracy with which they have been handed down. The Annals of 
Ulster, to take, one of several compilations of a like character, treat 
of Ireland from about the year 444, and record numerous natural 
phenomena as they occurred. If it could be proved that these phe- 
nomena actually took place upon the very date ascribed to them in 
the annals, we should be able to conclude with something like cer- 
tainty that they were actually written down at the time and recorded 
by eye-witnesses. The illustrious Bede in recording the great eclipse 
of the sun which took place only eleven years before his own birth 
is two days astray in his date, while the Irish annals give cor- 
rectly not only the day but the hour. This proves that their com- 
piler had access either to the original record of an eye-witness, or 
to a copy of such a document. These annals contain, between the 
end of the fifth century and the year 884, as many as eighteen 
records of eclipses, comets, and such natural phenomena — and 
modern science by calculating backwards shows that all these rec- 
ords are absolutely correct, both as to the day and hour. From 
this we can deduce without hesitation that from the fourth or fifth 
century the Irish annals can be absolutely trusted." 

The compiler expresses his earnest thanks to the Irish scholars 
and writers who generously aided his work. 



FOREWORD xiii 

The fine chapter on the Danish period ^ is contributed by one 
eminently well versed on the subject, Dr. Joseph Dunn, translator 
of the Tain bo Chuailgne, and Professor of Celtic and Lecturer on 
Romance Philology at the Catholic University of America. 

The noted worker in Irish history, biography, archaeology, and 
literature, "Sean-Ghall" — whom Arthur Griffith characterised as 
"the greatest living authority on Irish history" — gives us the fruit 
of years of research in the picture which he contributes of the ob- 
scure period from after the advent of Shane Buide to the eve of 
Shane O'Neill.^ 

Miss L. MacManus, the admired author of "The Silk of the 
Kine" and other fine Irish historical novels, and an authority upon 
the periods of which she has here treated, supplies the chronicle of 
Ireland during the Wars of Ehzabeth, and during those of WiUiam 
of Orange.^ 

The bright chapter on the Wild Geese,* and the record of those 
momentous decades of Irish militancy 1782-1 803 ^ have been treated 
by another of the distinctive Irish writers, Helena O'Concannon 
(Mrs. Thomas O'Concannon), author of "The Book of Irish Wo- 
manhood," and several other valuable works. 

Rev. Tomas O'Kelly of the National University (Galway), 
whose writing both in Irish and in English is not yet as well known 
as it ought to be, tells the story of the Parnell period.'' 

Another of the new generation, one who is making a name in 
fiction, essay, and poetry (Gaelic and English) Aod de Blacam, 
author of "Holy Romans," and "Towards the Republic" con- 
tributes the informing chapters on Gaelic literature, and those 
on the Sinn Fein period.^ 

For the Gaelic design on the cover of the book earnest thanks 
are due to a worthy Irish-American artist who is admirably striving 
to make Gaelic art live again here, in stained-glass work, Thomas 
Augustus O'Shaughnessy of Chicago. 







^^ayuujL 



1 Chap. XXX. 5 Chaps. LVI-LIX and Chap LXI. 

2 Chaps. XXXVII-XLI. e chaps. LXXII-LXXVI. 

3 Chaps. XLII-XLV and Chap. LII. ^ chaps. LXXVII-LXXIX. 
*Chap. LIV. 



THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 



CHAPTER I 

EARLY COLONISATIONS 

The Irish Race of to-day is popularly known as the Milesian Race, 
because the genuine Irish (Celtic) people were supposed to be 
descended from Milesius of Spain, whose sons, say the legendary 
accounts, invaded and possessed themselves of Ireland a thousand 
years before Christ.^ 

But it is nearly as inaccurate to style the Irish people pure 
Milesian because the land was conquered and settled by the Mile- 
sians, 'as it would be to call them Anglo-Norman because it was 
conquered and settled by the twelfth century English. 

The Races that occupied the land when the so-called Milesians 
came, chiefly the Firbolg and the Tuatha De Danann,^ were cer- 
tainly not exterminated by the conquering Milesians. Those two 
peoples formed the basis of the future population, which was domi- 
nated and guided, and had its characteristics moulded, by the far 
less numerous but mpre powerful Milesian aristocracy and soldiery. 

All three of these races, however, were different tribes of the 
great Celtic family, who, long ages before, had separated from 
the main stem, and in course of later centuries blended again into 
one tribe of Gaels — three derivatives of one stream, which, after 
winding their several ways across Europe from the East, in Ireland 
turbulently met, and after eddying, and surging tumultuously, 
finally blended in amity, and flowed onward in one great Gaelic 
stream. 

1 Many scientific historians deny this in toto. See Chapter III. 

2 De Jubainville denies a De Danann race to Ireland. He asserts they were 
mythological. MacNeill agrees with him. But many students of the question dis- 
agree with both of these able men. The fact that myths grow around great people 
must not lead us to conclude that the people were mythical. Fortunately Fionn 
and his Fian fell within historical time when actual facts, countering the myths that 
have gathered around them, were set down ; otherwise, by the same process of rea- 
soning, they might have been classed with the De Danann as an entirely imaginary 
people. 

1 



2 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Of these three certain colonisations of Ireland, the Firbolg was 
the first. Legend says they came from Greece, where they had 
been long enslaved, and whence they escaped in the captured ships 
of their masters. 

In their possession of Ireland the Firbolgs were disturbed by 
the descents and depredations of African sea-rovers, the Fomorians, 
who had a main stronghold on Tory Island, off the Northwest 
Coast. 

But the possession of the country was wrested from the Firbolgs, 
and they were forced into partial serfdom by the Tuatha De Danann 
(people of the goddess Dana), who arrived later. 

Totally unlike the uncultured Firbolgs, the Tuatha De Danann 
were a capable and cultured, highly civilized people, so skilled in 
the crafts, if not the arts, that the Firbolgs named them necroman- 
cers; and in course of time both the Firbolgs and the later-coming 
Milesians created a mythology around these. 

The great Irish historiographer, Eugene O'Curry, says: "The 
De Danann were a people remarkable for their knowledge of the 
domestic, if not the higher, arts of civilized life" — and he further- 
more adds that they were apparently more highly civilized than 
even their conquerors, the Milesians. 

In a famed battle at Southern Moytura (on the Mayo-Galway 
border) it was that the Tuatha De Danann met and overthrew the 
Firbolgs. There has been handed down a poetical account of this 
great battle — a story that O'Curry says can hardly be less than 
fourteen hundred years old — which is very interesting, and wherein 
we get some quaint glimpses of ancient Irish ethics of war (for even 
in the most highly Imaginative tale, the poets and seanachles of all 
times, unconsciously reflect the manners of their own age, or of 
ages just passed). The Firbolgs, only too conscious of the supe- 
riority of the newcomers, used every endeavour to defer the fatal 
encounter. When the armies were drawn up in seeming readiness, 
the Firbolgs refused to begin battle. And they coolly replied to 
the Impatient enemy that they could not say when they would be 
ready to begin. They must have time to sharpen their swords, 
and time to put their spears in order, to furbish their armour, and 
brighten their helmets. The Tuatha De Danann had better 
restrain their impetuosity. Tremendous things hung upon the out- 
come of this fight, and they, wisely, were not going to be rushed 
into it until the last rod in the last (wickerwork) shield was 
perfect. 

Moreover, they observed that their opponents had a superior 
kind of light spear : so time must be given them to get like weapons 



EARLY COLONISATIONS 3 

made. And they magnanimously pointed out to the Tuatha 
De Danann that, on the other hand, as they, the Flrbolgs, had 
the advantage of possessing craisechs, heavy spears that could work 
great destruction, the De Danann needed to provide themselves 
with craisechs. Anything and everything to stave off the dread 
matching of courage and skill. Altogether they most skilfully 
managed to keep the enemy fretting and fuming with Impatience 
for a hundred days and five before the great clash resounded to 
the heavens. 

But the De Danann gained an important point also. For, as 
the Flrbolgs were possessed of overwhelming numbers, the 
strangers demanded that they eliminate their majority and fight on 
equal terms, man for man — which the laws of battle-justice unfor- 
tunately compelled the reluctant Flrbolgs to agree to. 

The battle raged for four days. Then the Flrbolgs, finding 
themselves beaten, but pretending not to know this, proposed that 
the doubtful struggle be ended by halting the great hosts and pit- 
ting against each other a body of 300 men from each side. So 
bravely had the losing ones fought, and so sorely exhausted the 
De Danann, that the latter, to end the struggle, were glad to leave 
to the Flrbolgs that quarter of the Island wherein they fought, 
the province now called Connaught. And the bloody contest was 
over. 

The Flrbolgs' noted King, Eochald, was slain in this great bat- 
tle. But the greatest of their warriors, Sreng, had maimed the 
De Danann King, Nuada, cutting off his hand — and by that stroke 
deposed him from the kingship. Because, under the De Danann 
law (and ever after in Eirinn) no king could rule who suffered 
from a personal blemish. 

The great warrior champion of the De Danann, Breas (whose 
father was a Fomorlan chief) filled the throne while Nuada went 
Into retirement, and had made for him a silver hand, by their chief 
artificer, Creidne. 

Breas, says the legend, ruled for seven years. He Incensed his 
people by indulging his kin, the Fomorians, In their depredations. 
And he was finally deposed for this and for another cause that 
throws light upon one of the most noted characteristics of the 
people of Eire, ancient and modern. Breas proved himself that 
meanest of all men, a king ungenerous and inhospitable — lacking 
open heart and open hand — "The knives of his people" It was com- 
plained, "were not greased at his table, nor did their breath smell 
of ale, at the banquet. Neither their poets, nor their bards, nor 
their satirists, nor their harpers, nor their pipers, nor their trum- 



4 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

peters, nor their jugglers, nor their buffoons, were ever seen en- 
gaged in amusing them In the assembly at his court." So there 
was mighty grumbling in the land, for that it should be disgraced 
by so unkingly a king. And the grumbling swelled to a roar, when, 
in the extreme of his niggardliness, he committed the sin, unpar- 
donable in ancient Ireland, of insulting a poet. Cairbre, the great 
poet of the time, having come to visit him, was sent to a little bare, 
cold apartment, where a few, mean, dry cakes upon a platter were 
put before him as substitute for the lavish royal banquet owed to 
a poet. In hot indignation he quitted the abode of Breas, and upon 
the boorish king composed a withering satire, which should blight 
him and his seed forever. Lashed to wrath, then, by the outrage 
on a poet's sacred person the frenzied people arose, drove the 
boor from the throne, and from the Island — and Nuada Airgead 
Lam (of the Silver Hand) again reigned over his people. 

Breas fled to the Hebrides, to his father, Elatha, the chief of 
the Fomorians, where, collecting a mighty host of their sea-rob- 
bers, in as many ships as filled the sea from the Hebrides to Ireland, 
they swarmed into Eirinn — and gave battle to the De Danaan at 
Northern Moytura, in Sligo. In this, their second great battle, 
the De Danann were again victorious. They routed their enemy 
with fearful slaughter, and overthrew the Fomorian tyranny in the 
island forever. The famous Fomorian chief, Balor of the Evil 
Eye, whose headquarters was on Tory Island, off the Northwest 
coast, was slain, by a stone from the sling of his own grandson, the 
great De Danann hero, Lugh. But Balor had slain King Nuada 
before he was himself dispatched. 

This famous life and death struggle of two races is commemo- 
rated by a multitude of cairns and pillars which strew the great 
battle plain in Sligo — a plain which bears the name (in Irish) of 
"the Plain of the Towers of the Fomorians." 

The De Danann were now the undisputed masters of the land. 

So goes the honored legend. 



CHAPTER II 

THE TUATHA DE DANANN 

Over the island, which was now indisputably De Danann, reigned 
the hero, Lugh, famous in mythology. And after Lugh, the still 
greater Dagda — whose three grand-sons, succeeding him in the 
sovereignty, were reigning, says the story, when the Milesians came. 

Such a great people were the De Danann, and so uncommonly 
skilled in the few arts of the time, that they dazzled even their 
conquerors and successors, the Milesians, into regarding them as 
mighty magicians. Later generations of the Milesians to whom 
were handed down the wonderful traditions of the wonderful 
people they had conquered, lifted them into a mystic realm, their 
greatest ones becoming gods and goddesses, who supplied to 
their successors a beautiful mythology. 

Most conquerors come to despise the conquered, but here they 
came to honor, almost to worship those whom they had subdued. 
Which proves not only greatness in the conquered, but also bigness 
of mind and distinctiveness of character in the conquerors. 

The De Danann skill in the arts and crafts in course of time 
immortalised itself in beautiful legends among the Milesians. Lugh 
was not only the son of a god (of Manannan MacLir, the sea-god), 
and the greatest of heroes, but tradition gave him all the many 
mortal powers of his people, so that he was called Sab Ildanach, 
meaning Stem of all the Arts. When the De Danann had first ar- 
rived in Ireland Lugh went to the court of Eochaid, the Firbolg 
king at Tara, and sought an office. But no one was admitted a 
member of this court unless he was master of some art or craft not 
already represented there. The doorkeeper barring Lugh's way 
demanded on what ground he sought to be admitted. Lugh 
answered that he was a saer (carpenter). No, they had a good 
saef in the court already. Then he said he was a good smith. 
They had an able smith, also. Well, he was a champion. They 
already had a champion. Next, he was a harper. They had a 
wonderful harper, too. Then a poet and antiquarian. They had 
such — and of the most eminent. But he was a magician. They 

5 



6 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

had many Druids, adepts in the occult. He was a physician. They 
had the famous physician, Diancecht. He was a cupbearer. They 
had nine. Then, a goldsmith. They had the famous Creidne.^ 
"Then," said Lugh, "go to your king, and ask him if he has in his 
court any man who is at once master of all these arts and profes- 
sions. If he has, I shall not ask admittance to Tara." 

Eochaid, the King, was overjoyed. He led in the wonderful 
Lugh, and put him in the chair of the ard-oUam, the chief professor 
of the arts and sciences. 

The Dagda, who reigned just before the coming of the Mile- 
sians, was the greatest of the De Danann. He was styled Lord of 
Knowledge and Sun of all the Sciences. His daughter, Brigit, was 
a woman of wisdom, and goddess of poetry. The Dagda was a 
great and beneficent ruler for eighty years. 

1 The old traditional tales say that the Creidne mentioned was a very famous 
worker in the precious metals. The basic truth of these traditions seems evidenced 
by the reference in very ancient manuscripts to Bretha Creidne, "The Judgments 
of Creidne," a body of laws dealing with fine scales, weights and measures, and 
the precious metals. There is still preserved part of a very old poem, which says 
that Creidne was drowned, returning from Spain with golden ore. 



CHAPTER III 

THE MILESIANS 

The sixteenth-century scholar, O'Flaherty, fixes the Milesian in- 
vasion of Ireland at about looo B. C. — the time of Solomon. Some 
modern writers, including MacNeill, say that they even came at a 
much later date. There are, however, philologists and other scien- 
tific inquirers, who to some extent corroborate O'Flaherty's esti- 
mate. 

It is proven that the Celts whencesoever they came, had, before 
the dawn of history, subjugated the German people and estab- 
lished themselves in Central Europe. At about the date we have 
mentioned, a great Celtic wave, breaking westward over the Rhine, 
penetrated into England, Scotland, and Ireland. Subsequently a 
wave swept over the Pyrenees into the Spanish Peninsula. Other 
waves came westward still later. 

The studies of European scholars have shown that these Celts 
were an eminently warlike people, rich in the arts of civilized life, 
who subdued and dominated the ruder races, wherever they went 
on the Continent. They were possessed of "a high degree of po- 
litical unity, had a single king, and a wise and consistent external 
policy." Mostly, however, they seem to have been a federation 
of patrician republics. At various times they had allied them- 
selves with the Greeks to fight common enemies. They gave valu- 
able service to, and were highly esteemed by Philip, and by his son, 
the great Alexander. In an alliance which they made with Alex- 
ander, before he left on his Asiatic expedition, it was by the ele- 
ments they swore their fealty to the pact — just as we know they 
continued to swear in Ireland, down to the coming of Christianity 
in the fifth century. 

They piqued Alexander's pride by frankly telling him that they 
did not fear him — only feared Heaven. They held sway in Cen- 
tral Europe through long centuries. A Celtic cemetery discov- 
ered at Hallstatt in upper Austria proves them to have been skilled 
in art and industries as far back as 900 B. C. — shows them as 
miners and agriculturists, and blessed with the use of iron instru- 
ments. They invaded Italy twice, in the seventh and in the fourth 

7 



8 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

centuries before Christ. In the latter time they were at the climax 
of their power. They stormed Rome itself, 300 B. C. 

The rising up of the oppressed Germans against them, nearly 
three centuries before Christ, was the beginning of the end of the 
Continental power of the Celt. After that they were beaten and 
buffeted by Greek and by Roman, and even by despised races — 
broken, and blown like the surf in all directions, North and South, 
and East and West. A fugitive colony of these people, that had 
settled in Asia Minor, in the territory which from them (the Gaels) 
was called Galatia, and among whom Paul worked, was found to 
be still speaking a Celtic language in the days of St. Jerome, five 
or six hundred years later. Eoin MacNeill and other scientific en- 
quirers hold that it was only in the fifth century before Christ that 
they reached Spain — and that it was not via Spain but via north- 
western France and Britain that they, crushed out from Germany, 
eventually reached Ireland. In Caesar's day the Celts (Gauls) 
who dominated France used Greek writing in almost all their busi- 
ness, public or private. 

The legendary account of the origin of the Gaels and their 
coming to Ireland is as follows: 

They came first out of that vast undefined tract, called Scythia 
— a region which probably included all of Southwest Europe and 
adjoining portions of Asia. They came to Ireland through Egypt, 
Crete, and Spain. They were called Gaedhal (Gael) because their 
remote ancestor, in the days of Moses, was Gaodhal Glas. When 
a child, Moses is said to have cured him of the bite of a serpent — 
and to have promised, then, that no serpent or other poisonous 
thing should infest the happy western island that his far posterity 
would one day inhabit. Niul, a grand-son of Gaodhal, who had 
been invited as an instructor into Egypt by one of the Pharaohs, 
married Pharaoh's daughter Scota — after whom Ireland was, in 
later ages, called Scotia. And the Irish Scoti or Scots are the 
descendants of Niul and Scota. In Egypt Niul and his people grew 
rich and powerful, resented the injustice of a later Pharaoh, were 
driven from the land, and after long and varied wanderings, dur- 
ing succeeding ages, reached Spain. When, after they had long 
sojourned in Spain, they heard of Ireland (perhaps from Phoeni- 
cian traders) and took it to be the Isle of Destiny, foretold for 
them by Moses, their leader was Miled or Milesius, whose wife 
also was a Pharaoh's daughter, and named Scota. Miled's uncle, 
Ith, was first sent into Ireland, to bring them report upon it. But 
the Tuatha De Danann, suspecting the purpose of his mission, 
killed Ith. 



THE MILESIANS 9 

Miled having died in Spain, his eight sons, with their mother, 
■ Scota, their famihes and followers, at length set out on their ven- 
turous voyage to their Isle of Destiny/ 

In a dreadful storm that the supposedly wizard De Danann 
raised up against them, when they attempted to land in Ireland, 
five of the sons of Milesius, with great numbers of their followers, 
were lost, their fleet was dispersed and it seemed for a time as if 
none of them would ever enjoy the Isle of Destiny. 

Ancient manuscripts preserve the prayer that, it Is said, their 
poet, Amergin, now prayed for them — 

"I pray that they reach the land of Eirinn, those who are riding 
upon the great, productive, vast sea : 

"That they be distributed upon her plains, her mountains, and her 
valleys; upon her forests that shed showers of nuts and all fruits; 

1 Inisfail, one of many ancient names for Ireland, signifies Isle of Destiny. 
Of "The Coming of the Milesians," Moore sang: 

They came from a land bej'ond the sea. 

And now o'er the western main 
Set sail in their good ships, gallantly, 

From the sunny lands of Spain. 
"Oh, where's the isle we've seen in dreams, 

Our destin'd home or grave?" 
Thus sang they, as by the morning beams, 

They swept the Atlantic wave. 

And lo, where afar o'er ocean shines 

A sparkle of radiant green, 
As though in that deep lay emerald mines 

Whose light through the wave was seen, 
'Tis Inisfail — 'tis Inisfail! 

Rings o'er the echoing sea ; 
While, bending to heaven, the warriors hail 

That home of the brave and free. 

Then turned they unto the Eastern wave 

Where now their Day-God's eye 
A look of such sunny omen gave 

As lighted up sea and sky. 
No frown was seen through sky or sea, 

Nor tear o'er leaf or sod, 
When first on their Isle of Destiny 

Our great forefathers trod. 

Here let us understand that the ancient historical legends of Ireland are, 
generally speaking, far from being baseless myths. The Irish people are a people 
who eminently cling to tradition. Not only were the great happenings that marked 
great epochs enshrined in their memory forever, but even little" events that trivially 
affected the history of their race, were, and are, seldom forgotten. We know that 
away back to the remotest antiquity, the seanachie (shanachy, the historian) and 
the poet were honored next to the king, because of the tremendous value which 
the people set upon the recording and preserving of their history. The poet and 
the seanachie following the fashion of the time, took advantage of their artist priv- 
ilege to color their narrative to an extent that to the modern mind would seem 
fantastic. But it was with the details of the story that they were granted this 
liberty. The big, essential facts had to remain unaltered. The things of importance 
no poet of repute, however highly he might color, could or would dare to falsify. 



lo THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

upon her rivers and her cataracts; upon her lakes and her great 
waters; upon her spring-abounding hills: 

"That they may hold their fairs and equestrian sports upon her 
territories: 

"That there may be a king from them in Tara; and that Tara 
be the territory of their many kings: 

"That noble Eirinn be the home of the ships and boats of the 
sons of Milesius: 

"Eirinn which is now in darkness, it is for her that this oration is 
pronounced : 

"Let the learned wives of Breas and Buaigne pray that we may 
reach the noble woman, great Eirinn. 

"Let Eremon pray, and let Ir and Eber implore, that we may 
reach Eirinn." 

Eventually they made land — Eber with the survivors of his 
following landing at Inver ScenI, In Bantry Bay; and afterwards 
defeating a De Danann host under Queen Eire but losing their own 
Queen Scota In the fray — and Eremon with his people at Inver 
Colpa (mouth of the Boyne). 

When they had joined their forces, In Meath, they went against 
the De Danann In general battle at Talllte, and routed the latter 
with great slaughter. The three kings and the three queens of the 
De Danann were slain, many of them killed, and the remainder 
dispersed. 

The survivors fled Into the remote hills and into the caves. 
Possibly the glimpses of some of these fugitive hill-dwellers and 
cave-dwellers, caught In twilight and in moonlight, by succeeding 
generations of Milesians, coupled with the seemingly magical skill 
which they exercised, gave foundation for the later stories of en- 
chanted folk, fairies, living under the Irish hills. 

Though, a quaint tale preserved in the ancient Book of Leinster 
says that after Talllte it was left to Amergin, the Milesian poet 
and judge, to divide Eirinn between the two races, and that he 
shrewdly did so with technical justice — giving all above ground to 
his own people, and all underground to the De Danann ! 

Another pleasant old belief is that the De Danann, being over- 
thrown, were assembled by their great immortal Mannanan at 
Brugh of the Boyne, where, after counselling together, it was de- 
cided that, taking Bodb Derg, son of the Dagda, as their king, and 
receiving immortality from Mannanan, they should distribute them- 
selves in their spirit land under the happy hills of Ireland — where 
they have, ever since, enjoyed never-ending bliss. ^ 

2 Here is the ancient story-teller's description (from the Tain Bo Cuailgne) 
of the cavalcade of Bodb Derg, in after ages, coming from his palace under Sliab- 



THE MILESIANS ii 

Of the Milesians, Eber and Eremon divided the land between 
them — Eremon getting the Northern half of the Island, and Eber 
the Southern. The Northeastern corner was accorded to the chil- 
dren of their lost brother, Ir, and the Southwestern corner to their 
cousin Lughaid, the son of Ith. 

An oft-told story says that when Eber and Eremon had 
divided their followers, each taking an equal number of soldiers 
and an equal number of the men of every craft, there remained a 
harper and a poet. Drawing lots for these, the harper fell to 
Eremon and the poet to Eber — which explains why, ever since, the 
North of Ireland has been celebrated for music, and the South for 
song. 

The peace that fell upon the land then, and the happiness of 
the Milesians, was only broken, when, after a year, Eber's wife 
discovered that she must be possessed of the three pleasantest hills 
in Eirinn, else she could not remain one other night in the Island. 
Now the pleasantest of all the Irish hills was Tara, which lay in 
Eremon's half. And Eremon's wife would not have the covetous- 
ness of the other woman satisfied at her expense. So, because of 
the quarrel of the women, the beautiful peace of the Island was 
broken by battle. Eber was beaten, and the high sovereignty set- 
tled upon Eremon. 

It was in his reign, continues the legend, that the Cruitnigh or 
Picts arrived from the Continent. They landed in the south- 
west, at the mouth of the River Slaney (Inver Slaigne). A tribe 
of Britons who fought with poisoned arrows were at the time ravag- 
ing that corner of the Island. The Picts helped to drive out the 
marauders, and in reward were granted a settlement there, from 
Crimthann, the chief of that quarter. Afterwards they had an 
outfall with Crimthann — and it was decided that they should be 

na-mban to pay a visit to the De Danann chief, Ochail Oichne, who resided under 
Cruachan (in Roscommon) — "Seven score chariots and seven score horsemen was 
their number. And of the same colour were all their steeds ; they were speckled ; 
they had silver bridles. There was no person among them who was not the son 
of a king and a queen. They all wore green cloaks with four crimson pendants 
to each cloak ; and silver cloak-brooches in all their cloaks ; and they wore kilts 
with red interweavings, and borders or fringes of gold thread upon them, and 
pendants of white bronze thread upon their leggings or greaves, and shoes with 
clasps of red bronze in them. Their helmets were ornamented with crystal and 
white bronze; each of them had a collar of radiant gold around his neck, with a 
gem worth a newly calved cow set in it. Each wore a twisted ring of gold around 
him, worth thirty ounces of gold. All had white-faced shields, with ornamenta- 
tions of gold and of silver. They carried flesh-seeking spears, with ribs of gold 
and silver and red bronze in their sides; and with collars (or rings) of silver upon 
the necks of the spears. They had gold-hilted swords with the forms of serpents 
of gold and carbuncles set in them. They astonished the whole assembly by this 
display." 



12 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

passed into Alba (Scotland).^ The three Pictlsh chiefs were given 
Irish wives to take to Alba with them, on condition that hence- 
forth their royal line should descend according to the female suc- 
cession — which, it is said, was henceforth the law among the Alban 
Picts. 

Eremon's victory over Eber had slight effect in fixing on his 
lineage the succession to the overlordship : for, through many hun- 
dreds of years afterward, the battle had to be refought, and the 
question settled once more — sometimes to the advantage of the 
Eremonians, sometimes to that of the Eberians. A warlike people 
must have war. Occasionally, during the reigns of the early Mile- 
sian kings, this want was filled for them by the Fomorians, who, 
though disastrously defeated by the De Danann at Northern Moy- 
tura, were far from being destroyed. Irial, the prophet, the grand- 
son of Eremon, and third Milesian king of Ireland, had to fight 
them again. And at many other times the Island suffered from 
their depredations. 

Names of a long list of kings, from Eremon downward, and 
important particulars regarding many of them, were preserved by 
the historical traditions — traditions that were as valuable, and as 
zealously guarded, as are the written State Records of modern 
days.* The carefully trained file, who was poet, historian, and 
philosopher, was consecrated to the work — and, ever inspired with 
the sacredness of his trust, he was seldom known to deviate from 
the truth in anything of importance — however much he confessedly 
gave his imagination play in the unimportant details. And, much 
as the people reverenced him, they reverenced the truth of history 
more; and it was the law that a file, discovered falsifying, should 
be degraded and disgraced. 

The Scottish historian Pinkerton, who was hardly sympathetic, 
admits: "Foreigners may imagine that it is granting too much to 
the Irish to allow them lists of kings more ancient than those of 
any other country of modern Europe. But the singularly compact 
and remote situation of that Island, and the freedom from Roman 
conquest, and from the concussion of the Fall of the Roman Em- 
pire, may infer this allowance not too much." 

And the British Camden, another authority not partial to Ire- 

3 MacNeill holds that the Picts came to Ireland ahead of the Gael : and that, 
as distinct tribes, portions of them inhabited many parts of it, down till historic 
times. They also occupied large part of Scotland. 

* Many notable scholars deny the complete authenticity of this list. But un- 
doubtedly the greater part of the names are the real names of real kings who 
held sway over the Northern or the Southern half, if not over all, of Ireland. 



THE MILESIANS 13 

land, but sometimes hostile, says: "They deduced their history 
from memorials derived from the most profound depths of re- 
mote antiquity, so that compared with that of Ireland, the antiquities 
of all other nations is but novelty, and their history is but a kind 
of infancy," 

Standish O'Grady in his "Early Bardic History of Ireland" 
says: "I must confess that the blaze of Bardic light which illumi- 
nates those centuries at first dazzles the eye and disturbs the judg- 
ment , . . (but) that the Irish kings and heroes should succeed 
one another, surrounded by a blaze of Bardic light, in which both 
themselves and all those who were contemporaneous with them 
are seen clearly and distinctly, was natural in a country where in 
each little realm or sub-kingdom the ard-ollam was equal In dignity 
to the King, as is proved by the equivalence of their eric. The 
dawn of English history is in the seventh century — a late dawn, 
dark and sombre, without a ray of cheerful sunshine; that of Ire- 
land dates reliably from a point before the commencing of the 
Christian Era — illumined with that light which never was on sea 
or land — thronging with heroic forms of men and women — ter- 
rible with the presence of the supernatural and its over-reaching 
power." ^ 

s D'Arcy McGee sang of 

THE CELTS 

Long, long ago beyond the misty space 

Of twice a thousand years, 
In Erin old there dwelt a mighty race, 

Taller than Roman spears ; 
Like oaks and towers they had a giant grace. 

Were fleet as deers 
With winds and waves they made their 'biding place, 

These western shepherd seers. 

Their ocean-god was Mannanan MacLir, 

Whose angry lips, 
In their white foam, full often would inter 

Whole fleets of ships ; 
Crom was their day-god, and their thunderer. 

Made morning and eclipse ; 
Bride was their queen of song, and unto her 

They prayed with fire-touched lips. 

Great were their deeds, their passions, and their sports ; 

With clay and stone 
They piled on strath and shore those mystic forts, 

Not yet o'erthrown ; 
On cairn-crowned hills they held their council-courts ; 

While youths alone. 
With giant dogs, explored the elks' resorts, 

And brought them down. 



14 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Of these was Fin, the father of the Bard, 

Whose ancient song 
Over the clamor of all change is heard, 

Sweet-voiced and strong. 
Fin once o'ertook Grania, the golden-haired, 

The fleet and young; 
From her the lovely, and from him the feared, 

The primal poet sprung. 

Ossian ! two thousand years of mist and change 

Surround thy name — 
Thy Finian heroes now no longer range 

The hills of fame. 
The very name of Fin and Goll sound strange — 

Yet thine the same — 
By miscalled lake and desecrated grange — 

Remains, and shall remain ! 

The Druid's altar and the Druid's creed 

We scarce can trace, 
There is not left an undisputed deed 

Of all your race. 
Save your majestic song, which hath their speed. 

And strength, and grace; 
In that sole song, they live and love and bleed — 

It bears them on thro' space. 

Oh, inspired giant! shall we e'er behold, 

In our own time. 
One fit to speak your spirit on the wold, 

Or seize your rhyme? 
One pupil of the past, as mighty souled 

As in the prime, 
Were the fond, fair, and beautifuJ| and bold — 

They, of your song sublime 1 



CHAPTER IV 

SOME NOTABLE MILESIAN ROYALTIES 

The popular traditions give details regarding many notable Mile- 
sian royalties in the decade of centuries before the Christian Era. 

Within the first century after Eremon, is said to have reigned 
the distinguished Tighernmas (seventh of the Milesian line) who, 
they say, first smelted gold, and introduced gold ornaments, and 
gold fringes on dress. He also introduced various colours into 
dresses. Sometimes to him, sometimes to his successor, Eochaid, 
Is credited the ancient ordinance which distinguished the various 
classes and professions by the colours in their dress. A King or 
Queen might wear seven colours; a poet or OUam six; a chieftain 
five; an army leader four; a land-owner three; a rent-payer two; a 
serf one colour only. 

Tighernmas and two-thirds of his people were wiped out when 
they were assembled in the plain of Magh Slecht in Brefni, at wor- 
ship of Crom Cruach — a great idol which St. Patrick in his day 
destroyed. 

All the stories say that the greatest king of those faraway times 
was the twenty-first Milesian king, known to fame as OUam Fodla 
(Ollav Fola) who blessed Ireland in a reign of forty years, some 
seven or eight centuries before the Christian Era. His title, 011am 
Fodla, Doctor of Wisdom, has preserved his memory down the 
ages. The legends indicate that he was a true father to his people, 
and an able statesman. He organised the nation for efficiency — 
divided it Into cantreds, aj^polnted a chief over every cantred, a 
brugaid (magistrate) over every territory, and a steward over 
every townland. Some traditions say that he established a School 
of Learning. And as crowning glory he established the celebrated 
Feis of Tara, the great triennial Parliament of the chiefs, the 
nobles, and the scholars of the nation, which assembled on Tara 
Hill once every three years to settle the nation's affairs. This 
great deliberative assembly, almost unique among the nations in 
those early ages, and down into Christian times, reflected not a 
little glory upon ancient Ireland. 

15 



i6 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

One queen, famous and capable, whom early Ireland boasted 
was Macha Mong Ruad (the Red-haired), who reigned over the 
land about three hundred years before Christ. Her father, Aod 
Ruad was one of a triumvirate — the others being Dithorba and 
Cimbaoth — who by mutual agreement took seven-year turns in 
reigning. Aod Ruad was drowned at Eas-Aod-Ruad (Assaroe), 
now Ballyshanny. And when came round again the seven-year 
period which would have been his had he lived, his daughter, 
Macha, claimed the crown. But for it she had to fight her father's 
two partners — which she did, killing Dithorba; and first defeating, 
and afterwards marrying, Cimbaoth — and making him king. 

For many, the reign of Cimbaoth — which synchronises with 
that of Alexander the Great — marks the beginning of certainty in 
Irish history — because of the famed remark of the trusted eleventh 
century historian, Tighernach, that the Irish records before Cim- 
baoth were uncertain. 

When Cimbaoth died this able woman took up the reins of 
government herself, becoming the first Milesian queen of Ireland. 
But the record above all others by which this distinguished woman 
lives to fame, is her founding of the ancient and much-storied 
stronghold — named after her — of Emain Macha, which hence- 
forth, for six hundred years, was to play a most important part in 
the fortunes of Uladh (Ulster) and of Ireland. 

Macha's foster-son, Ugani Mor (the Great), who succeeded 
her, led his armies into Britain, and had his power acknowledged 
there. After bringing a great part of Britain to obedience, some 
traditions say that his ambition led him on the Continent, where 
he met with many successes also, giving basis for the ancient 
seanachies styling him, "King of Ireland and of the whole of 
Western Europe as far as the Muir Torrian" (Mediterranean 
Sea). 

All the leading families of Ulster, Leinster and Connaught 
trace their descent from Ugani Mor — the common father of the 
royalties of the three provinces. The origin of the name of Lein- 
ster is ascribed to the activities of Ugani Mor's great grandson, 
Labraid Loingsech. Labraid's grandfather (Ugani Mor's son), 
Laegaire Lore, was killed for sake of his throne, by his brother, 
Cobtach. His son was killed at the same time: and the grandson, 
Labraid Loingsech, only spared because he was dumb, and conse- 
quently could not rule. Labraid Loingsech was reared up in secret, 
under the joint fosterage and tutorship of a celebrated harper, 
Craftine, and a celebrated poet and philosopher, Feirceirtne. Get- 
ting a blow of a caman once, when playing caman (hurley) with 



NOTABLE MILESIAN ROYALTIES 17 

other boys, he suddenly found the use of speech. When he grew 
up and Cobtach discovered that he no longer had the disabling 
blemish, and was moreover held in high esteem, he drove him out. 
The young man was received with honor at the King's court in 
Gaul — whence after some time he returned, with an army of over 
two thousand Gauls, armed with broad spears to which the Irish 
gave the name of Laighen. On his arrival in Ireland, he learnt 
that Cobtach, with thirty princes, was holding an assembly in Dinn 
Righ. There Labraid marched, and destroyed them all. He at- 
tacked and burned the Dinn and its guests — and won his grand- 
father's throne — and incidentally supplied the plot for one of the 
most famous of old Irish tales, "The Burning of Dinn Righ." From 
the Laighen of the Gauls, whom he settled in this southeastern 
part, Leinster, it is said took its name.^ 

The story of Cobtach and Labraid is to some extent curiously 
paralleled in that of the next Irish monarch of much note, Conaire 
Mor, who reigned within the century before, or at the time of, 
Christ: and who, in establishing his strong rule over Ireland, put- 
ting down lawlessness and making himself and his rule respected 
and feared, drove out his own foster-brothers, the four sons of a 
chieftain of Leinster. These returned after a time with a great 
body of Britons, under Ingcel, son of a British king. They de- 
stroyed and burned Meath, and then attacked Conaire Mor and 
his retinue in the Bruighean of DaDerga (one of the six public 
houses of hospitality that Ireland then boasted) destroyed It, and 

1 About this Labraid Loingsech grew the myth (closely paralleled in the Greek) 
of his being cursed with the ears of a horse. 

He always wore a golden helmet, says the legend, to conceal his horrible 
secret. Because the barber who cut his hair was ever chosen by lot, and put to 
death immediately after he had performed his task, a dread fear was on the whole 
nation, of some awful mystery that their king concealed from them. 

Once the barber's lot fell upon the son of a poor widow. The woman's broken- 
hearted supplications so moved Labraid that he promised to spare her son's life, 
on his taking a solemn oath of secrecy. His terrible discovery, which he must 
now carry forever, a festering secret in his mind, so preyed upon the young man 
that he lost his sleep, lost his health, and was on the verge of losing his reason. 
He consulted a wise Druid, asking what he should do to save himself. The Druid's 
advice was that he must travel to a place where four roads met, and then tell to 
the nearest growing tree the dread secret which he must not give to any living 
being. He did this, and was instantly relieved, and grew hale, with a mind at 
ease, once more. 

Now it was a willow tree to which he told the secret. In course of years this 
tree was cut down, and a harp made of it for Craftine, the king's harper. And 
lo, when Craftine touched the strings of his new harp, in the hall of the king, the 
instrument sang: "The ears of a horse has Labraid Loingsech! The ears of a 
horse has Labraid Loingsech !" Over and over again, "The ears of a horse has 
Labraid Loingsech !" 

The court was horror-stricken, the king dumbfounded. Filled with remorse, 
and humiliated, but brave as a king should be, he bowed his head, and before the 
whole court, removed his golden helmet — thus ending the dreadful mystery forever. 



1 8 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

killed Conaire and his retinue. This tragic incident gave us the 
equally famous and remarkably beautiful tale, The Bruighean 
DaDerga. 

Some of the historians say that it was Conaire Mor who 
reigned in Ireland when Christ was born. But others make the 
reigning monarch then Crimthann Niad Nair (Abashed Hero) — 
a king famous in ancient story for his foreign expeditions — from 
one of which we are told he brought back, among the booty, a gilt 
chariot, a golden chess-board inlaid with 300 transparent gems, a 
sword entwined with serpents of gold, a silver embossed shield, 
and two hounds leashed with a silver chain. 

During Crimthann's reign occurred a notable return of Fir- 
bolgs from the Western Islands of Alba (Scotland) whereto their 
forefathers had been driven, long ages before. Now a colony of 
them, led by the four sons of the chief, Umor, with the eldest son, 
Angus, at their head, took refuge in Ireland from the persecution 
of the Picts, and by the high king were granted lands In Meath. 
They soon however found him as oppressive as the Picts had been 
coercive. And on a night they fled Westward from their Meath 
possessions. They crossed the Shannon into Connaught, which was 
still largely inhabited and dominated by their FIrbolg kin. There, 
the celebrated Queen, Maeve, and her husband, Aillll, gave them 
lands In South Connaught, where they settled once more. 

But they were pursued by the two great Ulster warriors and 
heroes of the Red Branch, Cuchullin and Conal Cearnach, who had 
gone security to the high king for their good behaviour — who here 
fought them a battle wherein great numbers of the Umorians were 
slain, including Angus' three brothers, and his son, Conal the Slen- 
der. A great cairn, known to this day as Cairn Chonaill, was 
erected on the battlefield to commemorate him and them. Angus 
with his own people then settled in the Islands of Aran, in Galway 
Bay, where he built the wonderful fortress still standing there and 
known as Dun Angus. 

At the time of Christ, the celebrated Conor (Conchobar) Mac- 
Nessa reigned over Ulster. 



CHAPTER V 

IRELAND IN THE LORE OF THE ANCIENTS 

Scotia (a name transferred to Alba about ten centuries after 
Christ) was one of the earliest names of Ireland — so named, it 
was said, from Scota, the daughter of Pharaoh, one of the an- 
cient female ancestors of the Milesians — and the people were com- 
monly called Scotti or Scots^ — both terms being frequently used 
by early Latin historians and poets. 

Ireland was often referred to — by various names — ^by ancient 
writers both Latin and Greek. Plutarch testifies to the nation's 
antiquity by calling it Ogygia, meaning the most ancient. 

One of its ancient titles was Hibernia (used by Caesar) — which 
some trace from Ivemia, the name, it is said, of a people located in 
the south of the Island; but most trace it from Eber or Heber, the 
first Milesian king of the southern half; just as the much later 
name, Ireland, is by some traced from Ir, whose family were in 
the northeastern corner of the Island. Though it seems much more 
likely that this latter name was derived from the most common title 
given to the Island by its own inhabitants, Eire — hence Eire-land, 
Ireland. It was first the Northmen and then the Saxons, who, in 
the ninth and tenth century began calling it Ir-land or Ir-landa — 
Ireland. 

In the oldest-known foreign reference to Ireland, it was called 
lerna. This was the title used by the poet Orpheus in the time of 
Cyrus of Persia, in the sixth century before Christ. Aristotle, in 
his Book of the World, also called it lerna. In the first half of 
the first century Pomponius Mela refers to it as luvernia. 

It was usually called either Hibernia or Scotia by the Latin 
writers. Tacitus, Csesar, and Pliny call it Hibernia. Egesippus 
calls it Scotia — and several later Latin writers did likewise. A 
Roman, Rufus Festus Avienus, who wrote about the beginning of 
the fourth century of this era called it "Insula Sacra" — which leads 
us to suppose that in the very early ages, it was, by the pagans, 



iMacNeill thinks the term Scot (and then Scotia) was derived from an old 
Irish word which signified a raider. He thinks they earned the title from their 
frequent raiding in Alba and in Britain in pre-Christian times. The conjecture 
is to the present writer unconvincing. 

19 



20 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

esteemed a holy isle. In a noted geographical poem of his occur 
the lines 

"This Isle is Sacred named by all the ancients, 
From times remotest in the womb of Chronos, 
This Isle which rises o'er the waves of ocean, 
Is covered with a sod of rich luxuriance. 
And peopled far and wide by the Hiberni." 

And the fourth century Istrian philosopher Ethicus in his cos- 
mography tells how in his travels for knowledge he visited 'Tliber- 
nia" and spent some time there examining the volumes of that 
country — which, by the way, this scholarly gentleman considered 
crude. 

That travellers' tales were about as credible in those far-away 
days as they are in days more recent, is evident from some of the 
curious things related about this Island by the early Latin writers 
— oftentimes grotesque blends of fable and fact. The Latin writer, 
Pomponius Mela (who was a Spaniard and flourished near the 
middle of the first century of the Christian Era), says in his cos- 
mography books: "Beyond Britain lies luvernia, an island of 
nearly equal size, but oblong, and a coast on each side of equal 
extent, having a climate unfavourable for ripening grain, but so 
luxuriant in grasses, not merely palatable but even sweet, that the 
cattle in very short time take sufficient food for the whole day — 
and if fed too long, would burst. Its inhabitants are wanting in 
every virtue, totally destitute of piety." 

The latter sentence is quite characteristic of the Latin writers 
of that day, to whom the world was always divided into two parts, 
the Roman Empire with which exactly coincided Civilisation and 
the realm of all the Virtues, and the outer world which lay under 
the black cloud of barbarism. 

But Strabo, who wrote in the first century of this era, does even 
better than Pomponius Mela. Quoting Poseidonios (who flour- 
ished still two centuries earlier), he informs us that the inhabitants 
of lerne were wild cannibals who considered it honourable to eat 
the bodies of their dead parents! But he blends sensational pic- 
turesqueness with caution; for he adds: "But the things we thus 
relate are destitute of witnesses worthy of credit in such affairs." 
He suspected he was setting down wild fiction, but evidently could 
not resist the temptation to spice his narrative for the sensating 
of his readers. - 

- An English clergyman with the CromwelHan troops in Ireland voticlicd for 
the fact that every man in a garrison which they captured was found to have a 
tail six inches long. Some of the English still helieve it. 



IRELAND IN THE LORE OF THE ANCIENTS 21 

Solinus (about 200 A. D.), as naive as any of his fellows, has 
the inhabitants of Juverna (as he names the Island) "inhuman 
beings who drink the blood of their enemies, and besmear their 
faces with it. At its birth the male child's foot is placed upon its 
father's sword, and from the point of the sword it receives its first 
nourishment!" He, however, also heard of, and records, the ac- 
count of Juverna's luxuriant grasses, which he says injure cattle. 
And the true statement that there is no snake in the Island he coun- 
terbalances by the misstatements that there are few birds in it, and 
that the inhabitants are inhospitable ! 

Seemingly forgetful of the fact that even the early Chris- 
tians were accused of eating human flesh, St. Jerome accused 
the Irish of cannibalism. And a reason suggested for his mak- 
ing the wild accusation was because he smarted under the scath- 
ing criticism of the Irish Celestius — "an Alban dog," as the 
good sharp-tongiied Father calls him, "stuffed with Irish por- 
ridge." 

The careful Ptolemy, in the second century, gives a map of 
Ireland vv'^hich (from a foreigner in that age of the world) is re- 
markable for the general correctness of the outline, and more note- 
worthy features. He names sixteen "peoples" (tribes) inhabiting 
it (the names of half of them being now recognised), and he men- 
tions several "cities" — probably royal residences. 

With the exception of Ptolemy who, in all likelihood, derived 
his knowledge from the trading Phoenicians, the early Greek and 
Latin writers only knew of Ireland that it was an island sitting in 
the Western ocean, and remarkable for its verdure. Yet the Phoe- 
nicians were probably well acquainted with its ports. Tacitus says, 
"The Irish ports in the first century were well known to commerce 
and merchants." 

The great antiquity of Ireland, incidentally acknowledged by 
foreign writers of olden time, is, as might be expected, sometimes 
fantastically exaggerated by ancient native writers. 

We have the legend set down by several early Irish writers 
that a Greek, Partholan, with his people came here a few hun- 
dred years after the flood. The Island of Inis Saimer, in the 
mouth of the River Erne, at Ballyshanny, is named after Par- 
tholan's favourite hound. A plague exterminated the Parthola- 
nians. 

But, not to be outdone in antiquity, by any European nation, 
some very ancient Irish poets people their country even before 
the flood — when, they say, in a well-known legend, that the Lady 
Cesair came with her father Bith, a grandson of Noah, and their 



22 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

following to Ireland, hoping to escape the flood — but in vain.^ 

3 Yet another legend, of n-.uch later origin, tells that one of the Lady Cesair's 
party did escape, namely, Finntann, a grandson of Bith, who kept afloat during the 
deluge — and lived afterwards, seemingly immortal, at Dun Tulcha in southwestern 
Kerry. Finntann reappeared in Irish history, on a notable occasion some thou- 
sands of years later, when, in the reign of Diarmuid MacCarroll, in the sixth cen- 
tury of our Era, this veteran, turned up at Tara to settle, by testimony taken from 
his long memory, a dispute about the limits of the Royal Demesne. Great was 
the awed wonder at the King's palace, when the old man arrived, preceded by 
nine companies of his own descendants, and followed by another nine. To prove 
the fitness of his memory, for testifying what had or had not been from the found- 
ing of Tara downward, he gave the wondering king and people some little idea of 
his age, by telling them the following story : "I passed one day through a wood 
in West Munster : I brought home with me a red berry of the yew tree, which I 
planted in the garden of my mansion, and it grew there until it was as tall as a 
man. I then took it out of the garden, and planted it in the green lawn of my 
mansion ; and it grew in the centre of that lawn until an hundred champions could 
fit under the foliage, and find shelter there from wind, and rain, and cold, and 
heat. I remained so, and my yew remained so, spending our time alike, until at 
last it ceased to put forth leaves, from old age. When, afterwards, 1 thought of 
turning it to some profit, I cut it from its stem, and made from it seven vats, 
seven keeves, seven stans, seven churns, seven pitchers, seven milans and seven 
medars, with hoops for alL I remained still with my yew-vessels, until their 
hoops all fell ofif from decay and old age. After this I re-made them, but could 
only get a keeve out of the vat, and a stan out of the keeve, a mug out of the stan, 
a cilom out of the mug, a milan out of the cilorn, and a medar out of the milan — 
and I leave it to Almighty God that I do not know where their dust is now, after 
their dissolution with me, from decay." 



CHAPTER VI 

CONOR MAC NESSA 

At the time of Christ, as said, there reigned over Ulster — residing 
at Emain Macha (Emania) — a king noted in ancient song and 
story, Conor MacNessa. 

He was a great grandson of Rory Mor, a powerful Ulster ruler 
who had become monarch of Ireland, and who was the founder of 
the Rudrician line of Ulster kings. 

The memory of Conor MacNessa is imperishably preserved in 
the tale of The Sons of Usnach and In the greater tale of The 
Tain Bo Cuailgne (Coolney) — not by any means with honour, in 
the former. 

Emain Macha was the headquarters of the famed Knights of 
the Royal Branch — now more commonly known as the Knights of 
the Red Branch. And it was in the days of Conor, and at his court, 
that these warrior champions reached the climax of their fame. 
For he was himself a doughty champion, an .able leader, and a 
great man — inspiration sufficient for such band of chivalrous war- 
riors as now rallied around him. In one of the tales of The Tain 
there is given by the herald MacRoth, a poetic description of this 
king, which at least tallies with what we would wish to think such 
royal king must be. Detailing to Queen Medb (Maeve) of Con- 
naught and her courtiers, a description of what he saw at the enemy 
Ulster camp, MacRoth says : "A tall graceful champion of noble, 
polished, and proud mien, stood at the head of the party. This 
most beautiful of the kings of the world stood among his troops 
with all the signs of obedience, superiority, and command. He 
wore a mass of yellow, curling, drooping hair. He had a pleasing, 
ruddy countenance. He had a deep, blue, sparkling, piercing eye 
in his head and a two-branching beard, yellow, and curling upon 
his chin. He wore a crimson, deep-bordered, five-folding tunic; a 
gold pin In the tunic over his bosom; and a brilliant white shirt, 
interwoven with thread of red gold, next his white skin." 

The deeds of the Red Branch Knights in Conor's day, over and 
over again chronicled by succeeding generations of poets and chron- 

23 



24 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

iclcrs, have not been, and never will be, forgotten. And Conor 
MacNessa was part of it all. 

His first wife was the Amazonian Medb (Alaeve) just men- 
tioned, a daughter of Eocaid, the Ard-Righ (High King) of Ire- 
land. Afterwards, as queen of Connaught and the instigator of 
the great Connaught-Ulster war (commemorated in The Tain Bo 
Cuailgne) she, too, was destined to become immortal. From her — 
who needed a husband to whom she could be both master and mis- 
tress — Conor had to separate. He found his happiness with her 
sister, Ethne, whom he took to wife then, and who proved to be 
all that was indicated by her name — Ethne, that is "sweet kernel 
of a nut." 

Conor was not only a warrior and a patron of warriors, but a 
patron of scholars and poets, also. His Ard-fde (chief poet) was 
the great Ferceirtne — to whom some writers of a thousand years 
ago were wont to ascribe a rude grammar of the Gaelic language, 
one of four books of ancient grammar, preserved in the Book of 
Leinster. "The place of writing this book," says the prefatory 
note to the grammar, "was Emania ; the time was the time of Conor 
MacNessa, the author was Ferceirtne, the poet: and the cause of 
composing it Avas to bring the ignorant and barbarous to true 
knowledge." 

Conor, patron of poetry and the arts, was a practical man who 
is said to have struck from learning the oppressive shackles of 
tradition that hitherto had cramped and bound it. Till his day the 
learned prolessions, both for sake of monopoly and of effect upon 
the multitude, used an archaic language that only the initiated un- 
derstood, and that awed the mass of the people. Once, however, 
the young poet, Neide, son of Ferceirtne's predecessor at Conor's 
court, having just won his poetic laurels, came to the court of 
Conor, where finding the poet's mani-colored tii'uj'ni (mantle) — 
made of the skins and wings of birds — lying on the poet's chair, 
he assumed the mantle, and took the poet's seat. When Fer- 
ceirtne discovered this, he, highly indignant, rebuked Neide, com- 
manding him to resign both the chair and the tiiiyiu. King Conor, 
to whom the matter was referred, commanded that it should be 
decided by a learned controversy between the two poets. The occa- 
sion of the controversy, in the presence of the king, the court, and 
the general public, was a great one. But to every one's disappoint- 
ment, though the two scholars disputed long, and no doubt learn- 
edly, no one there — with the possible exception of the two prin- 
cipals — was any wiser at the end than at the beginning. For they 
had used the obsolete language of the scholars. 



CONOR MAC NESSA 25 

Conor, provoked and disgusted, at once ordered that the pro- 
fessions should not henceforth remain in the hereditary possession 
of the ancient learned families — but should be thrown open to all, 
irrespective of family or rank. 

Yet Conor's reverence for poets was such that he saved them 
from expulsion, when, once they were threatened with death or 
exile, because, having grown so vast numbers, and got to be lazy, 
covetous, tyrannous, they had become an almost unbearable bur- 
den upon the multitude. O'Curry, indeed, says that in Conor's 
time so far had the taste for learning of all kinds, in poetry, music, 
Druidism in particular, seized on the mind of the nation, that more 
than one-third of the men of Eirinn had then given themselves up 
to the unproductive sciences. Conor gathered twelve hundred 
poets, it is said, into his dominion, and protected them there for 
seven years, till the anger of the people had abated, and they could 
scatter themselves over Ireland once more. 

The famous story of Deirdre and the Sons of Usnach, how- 
ever — though it be a legend splendidly elaborated by the poet, but 
yet, we may well suppose, based upon facts — would show that King 
Conor, for all his kingliness, was sometimes no better than kings 
are supposed to be. According to it, he betrayed the immortal 
Naoisi and his brothers, and drove the beautiful Deirdre to her 
death. The sorrows of Deirdre as told in the story of The Sons 
of Usnach is one of the Three Sorrows of Irish story-telling,* 

^ Deirdre was the daughter of Conor's story-teller, Feidlimid, and was born 
on a night when Conor was at the house of Feidlimid. Conor's Druid there and 
then foretold that this babe would be the cause of misfortunes untold coming upon 
Ulster. 

To prevent this. Conor took charge of the babe. Had her confmed in a fort 
where she should be reared up, without seeing any one except a nurse and a tutor, 
and Conor's spokeswoman — and when slie should reacli maturitj', he would make 
her his wife. 

As a young maiden, however, she managed to see Naisi, eldest of the three 
sons of Usnach, and immediately fell in love with him, and asked him to elope with 
her. Accompanied by Naisi's two brothers, Andli and Ardan, they fled to Alba. 
After a time they had to leave Alba, because the king had seen the rare beauty of 
Deirdre and coveted her. So tliey went off upon one of the islands. 

Conor's nobles, pitying the distress and sufferings of the wandering lovers, 
pleaded for their forgiving and recall. Conor appeared to consent to all this. 
Deirdre and the three sons of Usnach returned joyfully to Emania. On the green 
of Emania a body of Conor's friends, led by Eogan, fell upon the three sons of 
Usnach and slew them, and Conor then took the broken-hearted Deirdre to himself. 

For his treachery Fergus MacRigh whose honor Conor had pledged for the 
safety of the sons of Usnach, led a fierce assault upon Emania, in which Conor's 
son was slain, and 300 of his people, Emain itself pillaged and burned. 

Deirdre was with Conor for a year, during which time she was never once 
seen to raise up her head, or smile. No amusement or kindness had any effect 
upon her, neither wit nor mirth could move the lowness of her spirit. 

Incensed at her attitude, Conor at the end of the year, gave her to Eogan, 



26 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

It is recorded that the Danes made descent upon Ireland In 
King Conor's day. They are said to have besieged, about this 
time, a stronghold on the site where now stands Dublin. The an- 
cient seanachies tell in particular of one battle, fought at Emain 
Macha against the Danes, under their commander, Daball, the son 
of the King of Lochlinn (Denmark) — whereat Conor, having only 
youths to put in the field.against the invaders, had the youth's faces 
dressed with wool, so that their enemies, instead of being heart- 
ened to victory by knowing that an army of youngsters was coming 
against them, were instead disheartened by the idea that they were 
meeting battle-tried veterans. 

Conor died by a brain-ball that sunk into his skull — fired by the 
hand of Cet MaciMagacb, the Connaught champion, whom he had 
pursued after a Connaught cattle raid. 

The legend attached to Conor's death is curious. The .brain- 
ball fired by Cet did not directly kill him. It sank into his skull — 
and his doctor, Faith Liag, would not remove it, because that would 
cause instant death. With care, Conor might live long, carrying 
the brain-ball. Henceforth, however, he must be moderate in all 
things, avoid all passion, all violent emotion and lead such a lile 
of calm as kings in those days rarely knew. 

Under Faith Liag's wise care Conor contrived to live and en- 
joy life for seven years. But, one time, his court was thrown into 
consternation by finding broad day suddenly turned into blackest 
night, the heavens rent by lightning, and the world rocked by thun- 
der, portending some dread cataclysm. Conor asked his Druids 
and wise men for explanation of the fearful happening. The Druid 
Bachrach, a noted seer, told him that there had been in the East, 
in one of the many countries under the dominion of Rome, a singu- 
lar man, more noble of character, more lofty of mind, and more 
beautiful of soul, than the world had ever before known, or ever 
again would knoAv — a divine man, a God-man, who spent his life 
lifting up the lowly, and leading the ignorant to the light, and giv- 
ing new hope to a hopeless world — one, too, who loved all man- 
kind with a love that surpassed understanding — one, the touch of 
whose gentle hand gave speech to the dumb, sight to the blind, life 

Ihe chief of Fermnach, the man who for him had done the base deed to the sons 
of Usnach. 

As they took her away from Conor's residence to the residence of Eogan, 
she wildly leaped from the chariot, her head struck a sharp rock, and she was 
killed. 

Fergus MacRiffh and his companions with 3,000 followers quitted Ulster after 
Conor's treachery, and went into Connaught where they took service in the army 
of Sicdb. 



CONOR MAC NESSA 27 

to the dead. He was the noblest, greatest, most beautiful, most 
loving of men. And now the heavens and the earth were thrown 
into agony because on this day the tyrant Roman, jealous of his 
power over the people, had nailed him high upon a cross, and be- 
tween two crucified thieves, had left the divine man to die a fearful 
death. 

Fired to rage by the thought of the terrible injustice meted 
out to such a noble one, Conor MacNessa, snatching down the 
sword that had not been unsheathed for seven years, and crying, 
"Show me the accursed wretches who did this base deed!" burst 
through the restraining ring of courtiers, leapt into the storm, 
dashed through a grove of trees, fiercely hewing down their bend- 
ing branches and shouting, "Thus would I treat the slayers of that 
noble Man, could 1 but reach them." 

Under the strain of the fierce passion that held him the brain- 
ball burst from King Conor's head — and he fell dead.^ 

2 Some say that it was a Roman Consul. Altus, who informed Conor of the 
death of Christ. Still others say it was the Royal Branch champion, Conal Cear- 
nach — who had been a prisoner with the Romans, and who had been taken by 
them to the limits of their Empire, in the course of which expedition, he was in 
Jerusalem on the day of daj^s, and witnessed the Crucifixion. "A representative 
of every race of mankind," says the legend, "was on the Hill of Calvary at the 
dreadful hour." Conal Cearnach represented the Gael. The beautiful story of 
Conal Cearnach at the Crucifixion is related by Ethna Carbery in her book "From 
the Celtic Past" 



CHAPTER VII 

CUCHULLAIN 

Those days when Conor MacNessa sat on the throne of Ulster 
were brilhant days in Ireland's history. Then was the sun of glory 
in the zenith of Eire's Heroic period — the period of chivalry, 
chiefly created by the famous Royal or Red Branch Knights of 
Emania. Though, two other famous bands of Irish warriors gave 
added lustre to the period — the Gamanraide of the West (who 
were Firbolgs), and the Clanna Deaghaid of Munster led by Curoi 
MacDaire. 

All three warrior bands had their poets and their seanachies, 
who chanted their deeds in imperishable song and story which, 
down the dim ages, have since held spell-bound the clan of the Gael. 

But the greatest, the most belauded, and the most dazzling of 
all the heroes of that heroic age was undoubtedly Cuchullain, of 
whose life and wondrous deeds, real and imaginary, hundreds of 
stories still exist. ^ 

No cycle of Irish story with the one possible exception of the 
Finian cycle (whose time is a couple of centuries later) can at all 
compare with the wondrously rich, and extensive, Cuchullain cycle. 
And in the legendary literature of the whole world, by few other 
cycles is it surpassed. 

Cuchullain was a foster-son of King Conor. "I am little Se- 
tanta, son to Sualtim, and Dectaire your sister," he told the ques- 
tioning king, when, as a boy, in whose breast the fame of the Red 
Branch warriors had awaked the thirst for glory, he came up to 
the court of Emania. When he arrived there the youths in train- 
ing were playing caman upon the green. And having taken with 
him from home his red bronze hurl and his silver ball, the little 
stranger, going in among them, so outplayed all the others, that 
the attention of the court was drawn to him. And it was then that 

1 The name of Cu-chullain, Ciillan's hound, he took because once, as a little 
lad, when he approached the house of Cullan and was ferociously attacked by the 
smith's great watcli-hound, Setanta tore the hound asunder — ?.nd then pitying the 
bereaved Cullan said, ''I shall henceforth be your hound, O Cullan." 



CUCHULLAIN 29 

the little stranger gave the above reply to the question of the ad- 
miring King. 

The eager attention of the warriors of the Red Branch was 
drawn to this bright lad, and they foresaw great things for him, 
when they heard him express himself nobly and wonderfully, on the 
day that, in Emania, in the Hall of Heroes, he took arms. 

When a youth had decided to take up the profession of arms, 
a certain day was appointed for the solemn ceremony that dedi- 
cated him thereto. The day of dedication chosen by Cuchullain 
was disapproved of by the Druids, who having read the omens, 
pronounced that the youth who took arms on this day would be 
short-lived, though he should v^^in great fame, so his friends would 
dissuade the eager youth from taking arms to-day. In answer to 
them, the youth, standing up in the Hall of Heroes, with spear in 
one hand, and shield in the other, exclaimed: *'I care not whether 
I die to-morrow or next year, if only my deeds live after me." 

And in his after career he amply fulfilled the rich promise that 
lay in his words. He was to become his country's immortal hero. 

And the memory of this hero has run the gauntlet of strange 
vicissitudes in Ireland — the greatness of the man excessively stimu- 
lating the imagination of the poet, in the course of centuries, caus- 
ing his reality to be lost in legend; and in the course of further 
centuries, the greatness of the legendary Cuchullain creating for 
him a new reality in the minds of the Irish people. 

His legendary history is recounted in many stories in the great- 
est of Irish epics, "The Tain Bo Cuailgne" — the Cattle-raid of 
Cuailgne. The plan of the very great, very a^ncient, epic of The 
Tain Bo Cuailgne is roughly this: Queen Medb (Maeve) of Con- 
naught, who was daughter of the Ard-Righ of Ireland, Eochaid 
Fcidlech, and was first the wife of Conor MacNessa, King of 
Ulster, secured for herself the kingdom of Connaught, through a 
second marriage. And by a third marriage she had Ailill, of Lein- 
ster, as her consort and understudy. Once this queen Maeve and 
her King Ailill got counting and matching their worldly possessions. 
Throughout long and detailed reckoning of these possessions, it 
was found that neither one had any advantage over the other in 
worldly wealth — until, at length, it was discovered that Ailill, in 
his herds, had one precious bull which Maeve in her herds could 
not equal. Furthermore, in all Ireland, there was no bull to equal 
him, with the single exception of the celebrated brown bull of 
Cuailgne (in the present County of Louth). To the chief of 
Cuailgne Maeve sent a courier, to request the loan of his valuable 
animal, so that her herd might surpass Ailill's. And since it was 



30 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

natural that he might not wish to let out of his sight this precious 
bull, the chief was invited to come with the bull to the Connaught 
court, and there be royally entertained as long as the bull remained 
on loan. 

The request was readily granted; but unfortunately Maeve's 
courier in his cups that night had vaunted that if the bull had been 
denied to Maeve, she and her forces would have come and taken 
it anyhow. The account of the boasting was carried to the Cuailgne 
chief, who immediately ordered Maeve's courier back to Con- 
naught — without the bull. 

Then Maeve, enraged and determined, mobilised a great army 
for the invasion of Ulster (which was enemy-ground, anyhow) and 
for the forcible carrying off of the brown bull of Cuailgne. She 
had all the Connaught forces, chief among them the Fir Dom- 
nainn Knights, under their leader, Ferdiad; and she had a splendid 
body of Ulster malcontents, under Fergus MacRigh (cousin to 
King Conor MacNessa), who were eager to revenge themselves 
upon Conor and their native province. And she had also the 
armies of her allies, from the other three-fifths of Ireland. 

With this mighty army she marched upon Ulster — in the gap 
of which provmce they were met by the redoubtable CuchuUain — 
who standing in the gap of Ulster, and defending it against Maeve, 
and the four-fifths of Ireland, is henceforth the hero and the great 
central figure in the Tain. 

Not only are his wonderful deeds in this wonderful fight here 
recorded, but frequently the palpitating narrative is suspended, to 
give the seanachie time to recite some deed, relate some incident, or 
give us 'some glimpse, of the great hero's earlier career. 

The greatest, most exciting, portion of this great and exciting 
epic is the account of our hero's fight with his friend, Ferdiad, at 
the ford, where, single-handed, he is holding at bay the forces of 
Connaught. Ferdiad is the great Connaught champion, chief, as 
said, of the Connaught Knights of the Sword, the Fir Domniann 
and a dear friend and comrade of CuchuUain, since, in their youth, 
they were training for the profession of arms. And it is now sore 
for CuchuUain to fight the soul-friend whom the Connaught host 
has pitted against them. He would dissuade Ferdiad from fight- 
ing, by reminding him of their comradeship, when they were to- 
gether learning the art of war from the female champion, Scathach, 
in Alba. 

"We were heart companions, 

We were companions in the woods 
We were fellows of the same bed. 



CUCHULLAIN 31 

Where we used to sleep the balmy sleep. 
After mortal battles abroad, 
In countries many and far distant, 
Together we used to practise, and go 
Through each forest, learning with Scathach."^ 

But Ferdiad had not the tenderness of Cuchullain, and would 
not let fond memories turn him from his purpose. Indeed lest he 
might yield to the weakness of temptation, he forced himself to 
answer Cuchullain's tenderness with taunts, so as to provoke the 
combat. And fight they finally did. 

"Each of them began to cast spears at die other, from the full 
middle of the day till the close of the evening; and though the ward- 
ing off was of the best, still the throwing was so superior, that each 
of them bled, reddened, and wounded the other, in that time. 'Let 
us desist from this, now O Cuchullain,' said Ferdiad. 'Let us de- 
sist,' said Cuchullain. 

"They ceased. They threw away their arms from them into the 
hands of their charioteers. Each of them approached the other forth- 
with, and each put his hands around the other's neck, and gave him 
three kisses. Their horses were in the same paddock that night, and 
their charioteers at the same fire; and their charioteers spread beds 
of green rushes for them, fitted with wounded men's pillows. The 
professors of healing and curing came to heal and cure them, and 
they applied herbs and plants of healing and curing to their stabs 
and their cuts and their gashes, and to all their wounds. Of every 
herb and of every healing and curing plant that was put to the stabs 
and cuts and gashes and to all the wounds of Cuchullain, he would 
send an equal portion from him westward over the ford to Ferdiad, 
so that the men of Eirinn might not be able to say, should Ferdiad 
fall by him, that it was by better means of cure that he was en- 
abled (to kill him). 

"Of each kind of food, and of palatable, pleasant, intoxicating 
drink that was sent by the men of Eirinn to Ferdiad, he would send 
a fair moiety over the ford northwards to Cuchullain because the 
pur\'eyors of Ferdiad were more numerous than the purveyors of 
Cuchullain." 

On the evening of the second day, after a terribly fierce 
combat — 

"They threw their arms from them into the hands of their 
charioteers. Each of them came towards the other. Each of them 
put his hands round the neck of the other, and bestowed three kisses 

' This, and following excerpts, descriptive of the fight, are from O'Curry's 
translation. 



32 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

on him. Their horses were in the same enclosure, and their chario- 
teers at the same fire." 

When the fight reaches its third day the worn and wounded 
Ferdiad, by his irritable temper, and testy, taunting words, shows 
that he is getting the worst of it. On their meeting, Cuchullain 
notices the sad change that has come over Ferdiad's darkened coun- 
tenance: "It is not from fear or terror of thee that I am so dis- 
dained," said Ferdiad, "for there is not in Eirinn this day a cham- 
pion that I could not subdue." And again he says vauntingly of 
himself: "Of none more valiant hav^e I heard, or to this day did 
I ever meet." 

Cuchullain replies to his boasting: 

"Not one has yet put food unto his lips, 
Nor has there yet been born. 
Of king or queen, without disgrace, 
One for whom I would do thee evil." 

Cuchullain's persistent tenderness backs up the tide of Ferdiad's 
bad humour, and gives outlet for a time to his better nature. He 
replies: 

"O Cuchullain of the battle triumph. 

It was not thee, but Medb that betrayed me. 
Take thou victory and fame, 
Thine is not the fault." 

Cuchullain's reply: 

"My faithful heart Is a clot of blood, 

From me my soul hath nearly parted, 
I have not strength for feats of valour 
To fight with thee, O Ferdiad." 

But the weariness of the long, long struggle had so sorely told 
upon both of them that there is bitterness in their fight to-day as 
well as fierceness, till the hour of even's close. 

" 'Let us desist now from this, O Cuchullain,* said Ferdiad. 

" 'Let us desist, now, indeed, if the time hath come,' said Cuchul- 
lain. They ceased. 

"They cast their arms from them into the hands of their chario- 
teers. Though it was the meeting — pleasant, happy, griefless, and 
spirited of two (men), it was the separation — mournful, sorrowful, 
dispirited, of two (men) that night. 

"Their horses were not in the same enclosure that night. Their 
charioteers were not at the same fire." 



CUCHULLAIN 33 

As will have been noticed from the references, the Red Branch 
Knights and other famous knights of their day used chariots and 
frequently fought from them. 

Cuchullain's charioteer, Laeg, is, too, clothed in immortality, 
because of the frequent references to him in The Tain. Laeg's 
usefulness to Cuchullain did not end with his superb ability as a 
charioteer: he was worth gold, for abusing and taunting his master 
into hotter ire and fiercer effort, whenever in the course of a fight 
his master relaxed, or weakened, or was being worsted. 

For instance, on one day of the fight, Ferdiad who evidently 
knew a little psychology and profited by his knowledge, took occa- 
sion, before the fight began, and within sight of Cuchullain, to 
practise himself in some of his most startling sword feats. The 
display had its desired effect. 

"I perceive, my friend, Laeg" (said Cuchullain), "the noble, va- 
ried, wonderful, numerous feats which Ferdiad displays on high, and 
all these feats will be tried on me in succession, and therefore it is 
that if it be I that shall begin to yield this day, thou art to excite, 
reproach, and speak evil to me, so that the ire of my rage and anger 
shall grow the more on me. If it be I that prevail, then shalt thou 
laud me, and praise me, and speak good words to me, that my cour- 
age may be the greater." 

"It shall so be done, indeed, O Cuchullain," said Laeg. 

And it was so done, indeed. When Cuchullain was getting the 
worst o^ it that day, the fourth and last, the faithful Laeg came to 
his rescue. 

"Alas, indeed," said Laeg, "the warrior who is against thee casts 
thee away as a lewd woman would cast her child. He throws thee 
as foam is thrown by the river. He grinds thee as a mill would 
grind fresh malt. He pierces thee as the felling axe would pierce 
the oak. He binds thee as the woodbine binds the tree. He darts 
on thee as the hawk darts on small birds, so that henceforth thou 
hast not call, or right, or claim to valour or braver)^ to the end of 
time and life, thou little fairy phantom." 

Laeg's abusive efforts are fruitfuL Cuchullain rallies to the 
fight more fiercely, more terribly, more overpoweringly than ever, 
and at length gives to his friend, Ferdiad, the coup de grace. 

" 'That is enough now, indeed,* said Ferdiad. *I fall of that. 
But I may say, indeed, that I am sickly now after thee. And it 
did not behove thee that I should fall by thy hand.' 



34 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

"Cuchullain ran toward him after that and clasped his two arras 
about him, and lifted him with his arms and his armour. 

"Cuchullain laid Ferdiad down then; and a trance, and a faint, 
and a weakness fell on Cuchullain over Ferdiad there." 

Laeg called upon Cuchullain to arise, because the Connaught 
host would be so frenzied by the fall of their champion that for- 
getting the ethics of combat, they would throw themselves upon 
Cuchullain. 

" 'What availeth me to arise, O servant,' said Cuchullain, 'after 
him that hath fallen by me.* '* 

Cuchullain deplores what he calls the treachery and abandon- 
ment played upon Ferdiad by the men of Connaught, in pitthig 
Ferdiad against himself who is invincible. And he sang this lay: 

"O Ferdiad, treachery has defeated thee. 
Unhappy was thy last fate. 
Thou to die, I to remain. 
Sorrowful for ever is our perpetual separation. 

"When we were far away, in Alba 

With Scathach, the gifted Buanand, 

We then resolved that till the end of time 

We should not be hostile to each other. 

"Dear to me was thy beautiful ruddiness. 
Dear to me tliy comely, perfect foivn. 
Dear to me thy grey clear-blue eye, 
Dear to me thy wisdom and thy eloquence. 

"There hath not come to the body-cutting combat. 
There hath not been aroused by manly exertion. 
There hath not held up shield on the field of spears. 
Thine equal, O ruddy son of Daman. 

"Never until now have I met, 
Since I slew Aife's only son, 
Thy like in deeds of battle — 
Never have I found, O Ferdiad. 
• ••••••• 

"There has not come to the gory battle. 

Nor has Banba nursed upon her breast, 

There has not come off sea, or land, 

Of the sons of Kings, one of better fame." 



CUCHULLAIN 35 

After long wars and doughty deeds done on both sides, Medb 
gets the coveted brown bull, and fights her way back to Connaught 
with the rare prize. Yet, does he make Connaught, in its very 
short possession of him, sorely rue his carrying away. 

As the account of Cuchullain's fighting gives us an idea of the 
remarkable chivalry of the fighters in ancient Eire — at least the 
chivalry of that very ancient time in which the poet wrote, if not 
of that time in which the hero fought — so the account of his court- 
ship gives us some impression of the quality and character of the 
women of Eire in the faraway time, and the loftiness of men's 
ideals regarding them. 

When Cuchullain, chariot-driven by his faithful Laeg, went upon 
his famous courting journey, to woo the Lady Emer, the beautiful 
daughter of Forgaill the Brugaid (Hospitaller) of Lusc, the spec- 
tacle was impressive to all the wondering ones who beheld it. When 
he arrived at her father's Bruighean, the honoured Lady, modest as 
she was beautiful, was on the Faithe (lawn) sewing, and teaching 
sewing among a group of maidens, daughters of the neighbouring 
farmers. The hero was not only smitten by her beauty and her 
modesty, but captivated by her womanly accomplishments. 

For Emer was possessed of the six womanly gifts, namely, "the 
gift of beauty of person, the gift of voice, the gift of music, the gift 
of embroidering and needlework, the gift of wisdom, and the gift 
of virtuous chastity." 

When, to her maidenly confusion, she learns the purpose of 
Cuchullain's visit, she, with magnificent modesty, and as noble- 
hearted generosity, urges upon her wooer the prior and superior 
claims of her elder sister, thereby involuntarily making herself 
doubly desirable. Beyond all doubt she is and must be the one 
woman in all the Island suited to mate with and make happy, Eire's 
champion most renowned. And eventually she did make him 
happy. 

Cuchullain died as a hero should — on a battlefield, with his 
back to a rock and his face to the foe, buckler on arm, and spear in 
hand. 

He died standing, and in that defiant attitude (supported by 
the rock) was many days dead ere the enemy dared venture near 
enough to reassure themselves of his exit — which they only did 
when they saw the vultures alight upon him, and, undisturbed, peck 
at his flesh. 



CHAPTER VIII 

TWO FIRST CENTURY LEADERS 

The first century of the Christian Era saw two remarkable move- 
ments In Ireland — wherein the whole national structure was forcibly 
turned upside down by one remarkable man — and then as forcibly 
re-adjusted by another man even still more remarkable. 

These two great leaders were the usurper, Carbri Cinn Calt, 
and the monarch, Tuathal the Desired. 

It was early in the first century that occurred the great Aithech 
Tuatha revolution. The Aithech Tuatha meant the rent-paying 
peoples. They were probably the Firbolgs and other* conquered 
peoples — who had been in bondage and serfdom to the Milesians 
for hundreds of years. 

Among these serfs arose an able leader, chief of one of their 
tribes in Leinster, named Carbri Cinn Cait — which some translate 
"cat-head," a term of derision applied to him by the Milesians — 
but which Sullivan (introduction to O'Curry) more reasonably in- 
terprets "head of the unfree ones." 

Amongst these people who by the Milesian law were excluded 
from every profession, art and craft that carried honour, and 
ground down by rents and compulsory toil, this remarkable man 
succeeded in spreading a great, silent conspiracy. When they were 
ripened for revolution, the Aithech Tuatha invited all the royalties 
and all the nobility of the Milesians to a great feast, on a plain in 
the County Galway, which is now called Magh Cro, or the bloody 
plain, and there treacherously falling upon their guests, slew them. 
After which, the rent-payers, for five years, governed the land with 
Cinn Cait as their monarch. The Four Masters say of Carbri's 
reign, "Evil was the state of Ireland: fruitless her corn, for there 
used to be only one grain on the stock; fruitless her rivers; milk- 
less her cattle; plentiless her fruit, for there used to be but one 
acorn on the stalk." 

On the death of Carbri, his son Morann, who had become noted 
as a lawgiver and who was surnamed "the Just," refused the crown, 
and said that it should be given to the rightful one. Now Baine, 

36 



TWO FIRST CENTURY LEADERS 37 

wife of the slain King of Connaught, and daughter of the King of 
the Picts, who was pregnant, and visiting her father in Alba at the 
time of the great massacre, had borne a son, Feradach. And Fera- 
dach Finn-feactnach, the Fair Righteous One, now recalled from 
Pict-land, became King of Ireland. 

But his reign was a troubled, unhappy one. For the unruly 
elements were reluctant to settle down, after having tasted revolu- 
tion and rapine. Even the so-called legitimate chiefs who had come 
to their own again were restless and rebellious. In the reign of 
Fiacha of the White Cows, occurred another revolution — in which 
the provincial Milesian kings and the Aithech Tuatha seem to have 
been banded together. They overturned the reigning house, slew 
Fiacha, and placed on the throne Elim of Ulster — who, by re- 
pressing the Legitimists, and holding the favour of the Aithech 
Tuatha, managed to hold to his insecure position during a stormy 
reign of 20 years. 

But the favour shown the Aithech Tuatha, and the power they 
were permitted to exercise, so angered and aroused the Milesian 
classes that they recalled from his exile (in Britain) Tuathal 
Feachtmar — that is to say, Tuathal the Desired — the son of Fiacha 
(and sixth in descent from Eochaid Feidlech, the father of Medb). 
A great portion of the nation joyfully hailed the Desired and 
rallied to his standard. And at the Hill of Scire in Meath he 
overthrew Elim, who was killed in the battle. But before he felt 
secure upon the throne of Ireland, Tuathal had to fight 133 battles ! 

Tuathal broke up the tribes of the Aithech Tuatha and scat- 
tered and redistributed them over the land in such way that they 
could not easily combine and conspire again. 

This was a man of strong character, marked ability, and great 
moral power, whose reign influenced the future of Ireland. He 
established order in a land that had been for half a century in 
chaos. He fostered trade, and instituted laws for its protection 
and propagation. Lie made a new and important fifth province of 
Meath — which became fixed henceforward as the Ard-Righ's 
(High-King's) province. Before his day the other provinces met 
at the hill of Uisnech in that part of Ireland which is now called 
West Meath. From each of these he cut off a portion, which, at- 
tached to the former small domain of Meath made an important, 
rich, and royal Meath — enlarged from its former one tiiath to 
eighteen tuatha. From a little district Meath then became an im- 
portant province — the province of the Ard-Righ or High King of 
all Ireland. In each of the four cut off portions, moreover, he 
erected a royal residence — at the famous location where the four 



38 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

great provincial fairs were held, namely, at Tlachtga in Leinster; 
at Uisnech in Munster; Cruachan in Connacht; and Taillte in Ul- 
ster. Tuathal also re-organised the great National Fairs of Ire- 
land, and re-established the interrupted Feis or Parliament of Tara. 
And thus did the country and the Milesian d^masty recover, un- 
der this strong man from the staggering revolution of the Aithech 
Tuatha. 

One other most notable happening in this king's reign was the 
laying upon Leinster of the famous Boru tribute — a crime which, 
for long centuries, was to be the cause of bloody wars that should 
shake the Island. 

This was the origin of the Boru tribute : Of Tuathal's two 
beautiful daughters, Dairine and Fithir, the former wedded King 
Eochaid of Leinster. After some time, however, either tiring of 
her or coveting the beauty of her younger sister, Eochaid put 
Dairine away, and confined her in a tower. Giving out that she 
was dead, he went in mourning to the court of Tara, to seek con- 
solation. Tuathal gave him that, by presenting to him Fithir for 
wife. Eochaid took Fithir with him to the court of Leinster, 
where, after a time, and through an accident, the two sisters met 
face to face, thus discovering a hidden, horrible truth. The shock- 
ing discovery of the double shame he had put upon them over- 
whelmed with mortification and grief the two sisters; and they 
died, broken-hearted. 

When their father, the High King, learnt how that Eochaid 
had brought about his daughters' dishonour and death, he rallied 
auxiliaries to his aid, and marched into Leinster, ravaging it as 
he went. The province and its king were saved only by Eochaid's 
humiliated submission, and his binding the province to pay to the 
High King at Tara, every alternate year for an indefinite period, 
the tremendous tribute which came to be known as the Boru or 
covv'-tribute — five thousand cows, five thousand hogs, five thousand 
cloaks, five thousand vessels of brass and bronze, and five thou- 
sand ounces of silver. 

This crushing tribute was henceforth laid upon Leinster, by the 
High King of Tara from the time of Tuathal forward till the 
reign of Fionnachta, a period of five hundred years — but in most 
cases having to be lifted with steel hands. It caused more bloody 
history than did almost any other festering sore with which Ireland 
was ever afflicted. During these five centuries hardly a High King 
sat upon the throne of Tara, who did not have to carry the bloody 
sword into Leinster again and again, forcibly to hack his pound 
of flesh from off that province's palpitating body. And only some- 



TWO FIRST CENTURY LEADERS 39 

times was the fight fought between Meath and Leinster alone. 
Often, through alliances, mutual sympathies, antagonisms, hopes, 
or dangers, half of Ireland, and sometimes all of Ireland was em- 
broiled. So, together with much that was good Tuathal left to 
his country a bloody legacy.^ 

1 Tuathal's son, who succeeded him, Feidlimid Rechtmar, the Lawgiver, suc- 
cessfully pursued his father's policy of making the laws respected, — and the better 
to achieve the noble purpose, devoted himself first to making them just — according 
to his lights. He established the Lex Talionis — the law of an eye for an eye — a 
rude and severe justice, which held thereafter in Ireland until the coming of Pat- 
rick. With the more lenient spirit of Christ, which he introduced, Patrick ended the 
reign of Feidlimid's Lex Talionis. 

For still one other thing Feidlimid's name is somewhat memorable. The old 
seanachies quaintly record of him that "he died on his pillow," a phrase which 
indirectly throws a flood of light upon the abrupt manner in which the kings (of 
all countries) in those days usually made their exit from the world. 



CHAPTER IX 

CONN OF THE HUNDRED BATTLES 

The celebrated Conn of the Hundred Battles was a son of Feid- 
limid, the son of Tuathal — though he did not immediately succeed 
Feidlimid. Between them reigned Cathair Mor, who was the 
father of thirty sons, among whom and their posterity he attempted 
to divide Ireland, and from whom are descended the chief Leinster 
families. 

And we may pause to note that Cathair Mor is immortalised 
in Irish history by reason of a famous ancient will ascribed to him 
— a will that is of value because of the light it sheds upon many 
things of prime historical interest in early days. In this will we 
read, for instance, that he left to Breasal, his son, five ships of bur- 
den; fifty embossed bucklers, ornamented with border of gold and 
silver; five swords with golden handles; and five chariots. To 
Fiacha-Baiceade, another son, he left fifty drinking cups; fifty bar- 
rels made of yew-tree; and fifty piebald horses, the bits of the 
bridles made of brass. He left to Tuathal-Tigech, son of Maine, 
his brother, ten chariots; five play tables; five chess-boards; thirty 
bucklers, bordered with gold and silver; and fifty polished swords. 
To Daire Barach, another of his sons, he left one hundred and 
fifty pikes, the wood of which was covered with plates of silver; 
fifty swords of exquisite workmanship; five rings of pure gold; one 
hundred and fifty billiard-balls of brass, with pools and cues of the 
same material; ten ornaments of exquisite workmanship; twelve 
chess-boards with chess men. To Mogcorf, son of Laogare Birn- 
buadach, he left a hundred cows spotted with white, with their 
calves, coupled together with yokes of brass; a hundred bucklers; 
a hundred red javelins; a hundred brilliant lances; fifty saffron-col- 
oured great-coats; a hundred different coloured horses; a hundred 
drinking cups curiously wrought; a hundred barrels made of yew- 
tree; fifty chariots of exquisite workmanship; fifty chess-boards; 
fifty tables used by wrestlers: fifty trumpets; fifty large copper 
boilers, and fifty standards; with the right of being a member of 

40 



CONN OF THE HUNDRED BATTLES 41 

the council of state of the king of Leinster. Lastly, he bequeathed 
to the king of Leix, a hundred cows; a hundred bucklers; a hun= 
dred swords; a hundred pikes, and seven standards." 

Cathair Mor was succeeded by Conn who overthrew him in a 
great battle in Meath. As Conn's title suggests, his reign was 
filled with battling. Conn's strenuous militancy and the suggestive 
title that it won for him, made him famed beyond worthier men — 
famed through the generations and the centuries — so that it was 
the greatest pride of some of the noblest families of the land a 
thousand years and more after his time to trace back their descent 
to him of the Hundred Battles. 

But against Mogh Nuadat of Munster many of his most notable 
battles were fought. And in Mogh, Conn had an opponent worthy 
of his mettle. 

The Southwestern province, Munster, used to be reigned over, 
says Keating, alternately by the two races that inhabited it, the 
Ithians, descendants of Milesius' uncle, Ith, who occupied the ex- 
treme Southwestern angle, comprising the remote corners of the 
modern counties of Cork and Kerry — and the Eberians, descen- 
dants of Milesius through Eber, who occupied the remainder of 
the province. There was an amicable arrangement between these 
two races that each in turn should rule Munster. And when one 
race supplied the king, the other supplied the chief judge, and vice 
versa. 

This arrangement lasted till about half a century before the 
Christian Era, when there came South a portion of the Northern 
warlike Earnaan, from their late territory along Loch Erne, 
whence they had been forced out by the jealous Rudricians, the 
royal race of Rory, who ruled Ulster. By King Duach, who then 
ruled in Munster, the Earnaan were granted a settlement in Kerry. 
But, lustful of power, dominant and aggressive, they imposed them- 
selves as rulers upon Munster, when King Duach died. Their 
great leader, Deagad (from whom that portion of the Earnaan 
were afterwards called Deagades), became king of Munster. And 
for more than 200 years after, these Northern intruders held the 
Munster kingship in their tribe — to the complete exclusion and 
subjection of both Ithians and Eberians. 

It was in the time that Conn reigned in Meath as Ard-Righ, 
that Mogh Nuadat, an Eberian, roused his fellow Munstermen to 
battle for freedom from the tyrannical Earnaan. The monarch. 
Conn, jealous of the Munstermen, and sympathetic toward his 
fellow Northerners, the Earnaan, gave his aid to the latter. 
Nevertheless, the power of the Earnaan in Munster was over- 



42 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

thrown, and Mogh Nuadat took the sovereignty of the province. 

Mogh Nuadat then, confident of his might, went against Conn 
himself. But the tide of success, that had been with him, at last 
turned; and Mogh had to flee the country. To Spain he went, re- 
mained there nine years, and wedded Beara, daughter of Heber 
Mor, king of Castile. Then his father-in-law, the Spanish King, 
gave him 2,000 troops under command of his own son, wherewith 
to return and battle for the monarchy of Ireland. Returning with 
these Spaniards, he rallied to his standard his former subjects, and 
once again boldly invaded Conn's territory. 

Conn, with his allies, the Degades, was defeated in ten battles — 
till at length, for peace sake, he had to grant to Mogh one-half of 
Ireland — the southern half, henceforth to be known as Leth 
Mogha, Mogh's half — dominion over which was claimed by 
Mogh's successors, through almost ten centuries following. The 
northern half, which he retained under his ov/n rule is since known 
as Leth Cuinn, Conn's half. 

Unfortunately, the brave Mogh soon repented making peace 
for the reward of only one-half of Ireland, when, as he felt, he 
was powerful enough to have had the whole. The Spanish ad- 
venturers with him, having found peace unwelcome to their roving, 
warring nature prodded his ambition — till he declared Avar against 
Conn once more. 

Mogh Nuadat marched to Moylena in the midlands, where he 
pitched his camp, challenging Conn. Conn went against him with 
a great army of the North, and the Flan of Connaught, under the 
command of their hero chieftain, Goll MacMorna. Conn and the 
leaders of his army planned to attack Mogh Nuadat In the night — 
and did so — all except Goll and his Flan. For Goll had vowed 
that he would never attack an enemy in the night, or by surprise, 
or take him at any disadvantage. He had never broken his vow, 
and would not do so now. 

Such a capable leader was Mogh and so brave his men, that, 
despite the night surprise, they were not only not overcome but, 
after long fighting In the darkness, were wearing down and re- 
pulsing the army of the North. Fortunately for Conn he was able 
to hold out till day dawned. Then the chivalrous Goll, going to 
his assistance, gave a new spirit to Conn's army. Goll himself slew 
Mogh Nuadat, and Fraech, the son of the King of Spain. And 
following that, the Southern army wavered, were routed, and de- 
stroyed. 

When Mogh Nuadat was slain, the Northerners took up his 



CONN OF THE HUNDRED BATTLES 43 

body upon a stretcher and triumphantly bore it up and down In 
view of both armies — till GoU MacMoma, seeing this, rebuked 
them, saying: "Lay him down. He died as a hero should." 

Conn, in his triumph, displayed both discretion and marked 
ability by the adroitness with which he converted enemies into 
friends. For while he gave to his ally, Mogh Lama, leader of 
the Deagades, his daughter Saraid in marriage (the son of which 
pair, Conaire, was to succeed Conn in the kingship), he married 
his second daughter, Sabia (who was then widow of MacNiad, 
late chief of the Ithians), upon Oilill Olum, the only son and heir 
of the slain chieftain, Mogh Nuadat He thus drew together, 
by family tie, the Ithians, the Eberians, the Deagades, and his 
own people, the Eremonians. 

Moreover, because Mogh Nuadat was unfairly slain. Conn, 
accepting the arbitration of the judges upon the crime, paid eric 
(fine) for it — his own ring of gold, his own precious carved brooch, 
his sword and shield, 200 driving steeds, and 200 chariots, 200 
ships, 200 spears, 200 swords, 200 cows, 200 slaves, and his daugh- 
ter Sadb in marriage. So says the old "Book of Munster." 

Oilill Olum then became king of all Munster, both of the 
Eberian and of the Ithian sections — the first king of all that prov- 
ince. And thereafter (except in the one instance of Oilill's suc- 
cessor, the Ithian MacNiad) the kingship of Munster was re- 
served to the Eberians alone, and handed down in Oilill Olum's 
family. He willed — and his will was observed for long centuries 
— that the crown of Munster should henceforth alternate between 
the descendants o*f his two eldest sons, Eogan Mor and Cormac 
Cas — from the former of whom is the race of the MacCarthys, 
and from the latter, the race of the O'Briens. 

Conn's reign and life were ended by his assassination at Tara. 
Fifty robbers hired by the King of Ulster, came to Tara, dressed 
as women, and treacherously despatched the Monarch. 

Conn's son-in-law, Conaire II, who succeeded him as monarch 
— for his son Art was then but a child — is famed as father of the 
three Carbris, namely CarbrI Muse, from whom was named the 
territory of Muskerry, Carbri Baiscin, whose descendants peoplea 
Corca-Baiscin in Western Clare, and, most notable of them, Carbri 
Riada, who, when there was a famine in the South, led his people 
to the extreme Northeast of Ireland, and some of them across to 
the nearest part of Scotland, where they settled, forming the first 
important colony of Scots (Irish) in Alba, and driving there the 
edge of the Irish wedge which was eventually to make the whole 



44 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

country known as the land of the Scots (Irish). The Irish terri- 
tory which Carbri Riada's people settled, the Northeast of Antrim, 
and the territory opposite to it in Alba, into which his people over- 
flowed, became known as the two Dal Riada. And though divided 
by sea, these two territories were, for many centuries, to be as one 
Irish territory, administered and ruled over by the one Irish prince. 



CHAPTER X 

CORMAC MAC ART 

Of all the ancient kings of Ireland, Cormac, who reigned in the 
third century, is unquestionably considered greatest by the poets, 
the seanachies, and the chroniclers. His father Art was the son 
of Conn of the Hundred Battles, and was known as Art the Lonely, 
because, the story goes, that from the time he lost his brothers, 
Connla and Crionna — both slain by their uncles (though another 
famous story has it that Connla sailed away to Fairyland and never 
returned), he was pitifully solitary, and silent ever after till life's 
end ^ — the day of Moy Mocruime (in Galway) at which great 
battle he was killed, fighting the foreign forces which his exiled 
nephew Lugaid MacCon had brought back with him from his exile 
among the Picts, and the Britons. Lugaid, having won at Moy 
Mocruime, established himself as Ard-Righ of Eirinn. A rude, ill- 
tempered, domineering man was this Lugaid, who won little heart- 
loyalty from the people, and was but little mourned when he died. 
He was stabbed to death by a Druid, at Gort-an-Oir, as he was 
bestowing golden gifts on the poets. 

It was at the court of this Lugaid at Tara, that Cormac first 
distinguished himself, and gave token of the ability and wisdom, 
which were, afterwards, to mark him the most distinguished of 
Eirinn's monarchs. 

lART THE LONELY 

The berried quicken-branches lament in lonely sighs, 
Through open doorvA'ays of the dun a lonely wet wind cries ; 
And lonely in the hall he sits, with feasting warriors round, 
The harp that lauds his fame in fights hath a lonely sound. 

The speckled salmon, too, darts lonely in the pool. 
The swan floats lonely with her brood in shallows cool, 
His steeds — the swift and gentle — are lonely in their stall, 
The sorrow of his loneliness weighs heavy over all. 

For in the house of Tara three shadows share the feast, 
Conn sits within the High-King's place, against the East, 
And Crionna whispers to his hound some memory of the chase. 
While Connla to the harping turns a joyous listening face. 

— Ethna Carbery in "The Four Winds of Eirinn." 
45 



46 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

From his exile in Connaught, Cormac, a green youth, had re- 
turned to Tara, where, unrecognised, he was engaged herding 
sheep for a poor widow. Now one of the sheep broke into the 
queen's garden, and ate the queen's vegetables. And King Lugaid, 
equally angry as his queen, after he heard the case, ordered that 
for penalty on the widow, her sheep should be forfeit to the queen. 

To the amazement of Lugaid's court, the herd-boy who had 
been watching the proceedings with anxiety, arose, and, facing the 
king, said, "Unjust is thy award, O king, for, because thy queen 
hath lost a few vegetables, thou wouldst deprive the poor widow 
of her livelihood?" 

When the king recovered from his astoundment, he looked 
contemptuously at the lad, asking scathingly: "And what, O wise 
herd-boy, would be thy just award?" 

The herd-boy, not one little bit disconcerted, answered him : 
"My award would be that the wool of the sheep should pay for 
the vegetables the sheep has eaten — because both the wool and 
the green things will grow again, and both parties have forgotten 
their hurt." 

And the wonderful wisdom of the judgment drew the applause 
of the astounded court. 

But Lugaid exclaimed in alarm: "It is the judgment of a 
King." 

And, the lad's great mind having betrayed him, he had to 
flee. 

He returned and claimed the throne when Lugaid was killed, 
but at a feast which he gave to the princes whose support he 
wanted, Fergus Black-Tooth of Ulster, who coveted the Ard- 
Righship, managed, it is said, to singe the hair of Cormac — creat- 
ing a blemish that debarred the young man temporarily from the 
throne. And he fled again from Tara, fearing designs upon his 
life. 

Fergus became Ard-Righ for a year — at the end of which time 
Cormac returned with an army, and, supported by Taig, the son 
of Ciann, and grandson of the great Oilill Olum of Munster, com- 
pletely overthrew the usurper in the great battle of Crionna (on 
the Boyne) where Fergus and his two brothers were slain — and 
Cormac won undisputed possession of the monarchy. 

Taig was granted a large territory between Damlaig (Duleek) 
and the River Lifii, since then called the Ciannachta. He became 
the ancestor of the O'Hara's, O'Gara's, O'Carroll's, and other now 
Northern families. 

"A noble, illustrious king," says a tract preserved in the Book 



CORMAC MAC ART 47 

of Ballymote, "now took sovereignty and rule over Eirinn, namely, 
Cormac, the grandson of Conn. The world was replete with all 
that was good in his time: the food and the fat of the land, and 
the gifts of the sea were in abundance in this king's reign. There 
were neither woundings nor robberies in his time, but every one 
enjoyed his own, in peace." 

And another ancient account says: "A great king, of great 
judgment now assumed the sovereignty of Eirinn, i.e., Cormac, 
the son of Art, the son of Conn of the Hundred Battles. Eirinn 
was prosperous during his time, and just judgments were distrib- 
uted throughout by him, so that no one durst attempt to wound a 
man in Ireland, during the short jubilee of seven years." 

Cormac rebuilt the palace of Tara, with much magnificence. 
He built the Teach Mi Chuarta, the great banqueting hall, that 
was 760 feet by 46 feet, and 45 feet high. Until quite recently, 
the outline of the foundations of this great hall with the traces 
of its fourteen doorways, were still to be observed on Tara Hill. 
He also built a grianan (sun-house) for the women — and the 
House of the Hostages, and the House of a Thousand Soldiers. 
He gave to the office of Ard-Righ a magnificence that it had not 
known before. 

Amergin MacAmlaid, the scholar-bard of King Diarmaid Mac- 
Carroll, in the seventh century, gives a poetic account of Cormac's 
princely household, in which he says his hall had a flaming lamp, 
and 150 beds; and 150 warriors stood in the king's presence when 
he sat down at the banquet; there were 150 cup-bearers; 150 jew- 
elled cups of silver and gold; and 50 over 1000 was the number 
of the entire household. 

In the Book of Leinster is related, "Three thousand persons 
each day is what Cormac used to maintain in pay; besides poets 
and satirists, and all the strangers who sought the king; Galls, 
and Romans, and Franks, and Frisians, and Longbards, and Al- 
banians (Caledonians), and Saxons, and Cruithnians (Picts), for 
all these used to seek him, and it was with gold and with silver, 
with steeds and with chariots, that he presented them. They used 
all to come to Cormac, because there was not in his time, nor be- 
fore him, any more celebrated in honour, and in dignity, and in 
wisdom, except only Solomon, the son of David." 

And to the Feis of Tara he gave a new dignity and importance 
that helped to make its decisions and decrees respected in every 
corner of the land. 

From the Book of Ballymote is taken this interesting descrip- 
tion of Cormac at that Feis: 



48 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

"His hair was slightly curled, and of golden colour; he had a 
scarlet shield with engraved devices, and golden hooks and clasps of 
silver; a wide-flowing purple cloak on him, with a gem-set gold 
brooch over his breast; a gold torque around his neck; a white-collared 
shirt, embroidered with gold, upon him, a girdle with golden buckles, 
and studded with precious stones, around him ; two golden net-work 
sandals with golden buckles upon his feet; two spears with golden 
sockets, and many red bronze rivets, in his hand ; while he stood in 
the full glow of beauty, without defect or blemish. You would 
think it was a shower of pearls that were set in his mouth; his lips 
were rubies; his symmetrical body was as white as snow; his cheek 
was like the mountain ash-berry; his eyes were like the sloe; his 
brows and eye-lashes were like the sheen of a blue-black lance." 

The noted 17th century Irish scholar and historian, O'Flaherty, 
says : "Cormac exceeded all his predecessors in magnificence, munif- 
icence, wisdom, and learning, as also in military achievements. 
His palace was most superbly adorned and richly furnished, and 
his numerous family proclaim his majesty and munificence; the 
books he published, and the schools he endowed at Temair (Tara) 
bear unquestionable testimony of his learning. There were three 
schools instituted,' in the first the most eminent professors of the 
art of war were engaged, in the second, history was taught, and in 
the third, jurisprudence was professed." 

He sought not to confine the benefits of his rule to Eirinn, but 
wanted to extend them to Alba also. The P'our Masters record 
under the year 240, that the fleet of Cormac sailed across Magh 
Rian, the Plain of the Sea, and obtained for him the sovereignty of 
Alba. 

Cormac, for all his greatness, was not invariably just. He car- 
ried an unjust war into Munster — and was punished therefor. 
Once Tara ran short of provisions — which to befall king or com- 
moner in ancient Ireland, at whose residence guests might any 
moment arrive, was almost the unpardonable sin. On this occa- 
sion, Cormac's high steward advised him that the great province 
of Munster which, by its size and wealth, ought to pay two-fifths 
of the tribute of Ireland to the high-king, only paid one-fifth, 
and should now be called on to provision Tara. Cormac, impressed 
by the argument, made demand upon Munster — which Fiacha, the 
son of Eogan Mor, the son of Oilill Olum, promptly refused. 
Cormac immediately marched into that kingdom, at the head of 
his army, to collect what he considered his due. Fiacha, with the 

2 O'Curry says he can find no authority for this statement. 



CORMAC MAC ART 49 

Munstermen met him at the place which is now called Knocklong, 
in Limerick, gave brave battle to, and completely routed, the High- 
King's army, pursued them into Ossory, and humiliatingly com- 
pelled Cormac to give him securities and pledges, and to promise 
to send him hostages from Tara. 

O'Halloran says that there was at Tara in Cormac's time, a 
house of virgins who kept constantly alive the fires of Bel or the 
sun, and of Samain, the moon. It became historic from the fact 
that Dunlaing MacEnda, King of Leinster, once broke into this 
retreat, and put the virgins to the sword — for which Cormac de- 
creed death to the scoundrel; and compelled his successors to send 
to Tara, every year, 30 white cows with calves of the same colour, 
30 brass collars for the cows, and 30 chains to hold them while 
milking. 

Historians record that the first watermill was introduced into 
Eirinn by Cormac. It was to spare toil to his concubine, Ciarnat, 
the daughter of the king of the Picts, that he did it. She was said 
to have surpassed all women in beauty. The men of Ulster had 
carried her off from Alba. From them Cormac obtained her; and 
his wife Ethni, jealous of her, made Ciarnat her slave, compelling 
the woman to grind by the quern every day nine pecks of corn. 
Cormac, it is said, brought craftsmen from Alba — where water- 
mills had been introduced from the Romans — to construct the mill 
— for sparing of Ciarnat. 

A new classification of the people is said to have been made 
by the assembled nobles and scholars, at the Feis of Tara, in Cor- 
mac's time — being ranked according to their mental and material 
quahfications. 

When Cormac found himself advanced in years, he resigned 
the throne and its cares. Some say he had to resign, because he 
lost an eye — lost it in his own hall, one time that his son, Cellach, 
who had insulted a woman of the Desi was thereinto pursued by 
the avenger of the Deisi, the chieftain, Aengus, who killed Cellach 
in his father's presence, and in the scuffle, put out the eye of the 
monarch also. 

Aengus, it is worth noting here, was not summarily slain by 
Cormac's order. This philosophic and just king called him to 
answer before a court of justice. And, for his double crime, Aengus 
and his clan were exiled from Meath, where they (of the Southern 
Ciannachta) had their patrimony. They sojourned for a while in 
Leinster, and afterwards went onward to Munster, of their own 
kindred. There they helped the Munster King (Aengus of Cashel) 
to wrest from Leinster large territory in Tipperary and Water- 



50 THE STORY OF THE IRISFI RACE 

ford — and in reward there was settled on them part of the new 
territory — in Waterford, where their country is to this day knoAvn 
as the Deisi. 

Cormac, as said, resigned the High-Kingship, thus ending one 
of the most fruitful as well as illustrious reigns that ever hlcssed 
the Island. "He was the greatest king," says one of the old his- 
torians, "that Ireland ever knew. In power and eloquence, in the 
vigour and splendour of his reign, he had not his like before or 
since. In his reign no one needed to holt the door, no one needed to 
guard the flock, nor was any one in all Ireland distressed for want 
of food or clothing. For of all Ireland this wise and just king 
made a beautiful land of promise," 

He retired to Clcite Acaill, on the Boync, where he gave him- 
self to study and good works. 

Three great literary works are, by various ancient authorities, 
ascribed to him in his retirement — namely, Teagasc an Riogh (In- 
structions of a King), The Book of Acaill, and The Psaltair of 
Tara. Teagasc an Riogh taking the form of a dialogue between 
Cormac and his son Cairbre whom he is instructing for the duties 
of his position as Ard-Righ, is one of the works that some old 
writers claim to have originated with him — though it is more likely 
to be a literary product of several centuries later. ^ 

'Of whatever ancient age thev are. these Precepts form a rather remarkable, 
very wise, code of ethics — of w4iich some samples are here pieced together — 
(chiefly from Kimo Meyer's version). 

"d grandson of Conn, O Cormac," said Cairbre. "what is best for a king?" 

"Not hard to tell." said Cormac. "Best for him — firmness without anger, pa- 
tience without strife, affability without haughtiness, guarding of ancient lore, giv- 
ing justice, truth, peace, ginng many alms, honoring poets, worshipping the great 
God. 

"... I^t him attend to the sick, benefit the strong, possess truth, chide false- 
hood, love righteousness, curb fear, cnish criminals, judge truly, foster science, 
improve his soul, utter every truth. For it is through the truth of a ruler that 
God gives all. 

"Let him restrain the great, slay evil-doers, exalt the good, consolidate peace, 
check unlawfulness, protect the just, confine the unjust. 

"He should question the wise, follow ancient lore, fulfil the law, be honest 
with friends, be manly with foes, learn every art, know every language, hearken 
to elders, be deaf to the rabble. 

"Let him be gentle, let him be hard, let him be loving, let him be merciful, 
let him be righteous, lot him be patient, let him be persevenng. let him hate false- 
hood, let hirn love truth, let him be forgetful of wrong, let him be mindful of 
good, let him be attended by a host in gatherings, and by few in secret councils, 
let his covenants be firm, let his levies be lenient, let his judgments and decisions be 
sharp and light. . . . For it is by these qualities, kings and lords are judged." 

"O grand-son of Conn, O Cormac," said Cairbre. "What were your habits 
when vou were a lad?" 

"Not hard to tell." said Cormac. 

"I was a listener in woods. 
I was a gazer at stars. 
T was unseeing among secrets. 



CORMAC MAC ART 51 

A second book attributed to Cormac is the Book of Acaill so 
named from his place of retirement. It is a book of the principles 
of Criminal Law, which is supposed to have been developed and 
enriched by later lawgivers and commentators — in particular by 
the eminent lawgiver, Ceann Falad, who died in 677. The Book 
of Acaill is found annexed to a law treatise of Ceann Falad's. Both 
are preserved and form a part of the Irish Brehon Laws. The 
prolegomenon of the Book of Acaill says : "The place of this book is 
Acaill close to Teamair (Tara), and its time is the time of Cairbre 
Lifechair, the son of Cormac, and its author, Cormac, and the 
cause of its having been composed was the blinding of an eye of 
Cormac by Aengus Gabuidech, after the abduction of a daughter 
of Sorcer, the son of Art Corb, by Cellach, the son of Cormac." 

The scholars differ regarding the authenticity — but several of 

I was silent in a wilderness, 

I was conversational among many, 

I was mild in the mead-hall, 

I was fierce in the battlefield, 

I was gentle in friendship, 

I was a nurse to the sick, 

I was weak toward the strengthless, 

I was strong toward the powerful, 

I was not arrogant though I was wise, 
I was not a promiser though I was rich, 
I was not boastful though I was skilled, 
I would not speak ill of the absent, 
I would not reproach, but I would praise, 
I would not ask, but I would give — 

For it is through these habits that the young become old and kingly warriors." 
"O grandson of Conn, O Cormac," said Cairbre, "what is good for me?" 
"Not hard to tell," said Cormac, "if you listen to my teaching — 

"Do not deride the old, though you are young: 
Nor the poor, though you are wealthy ; 
Nor the lame, though you are swift; 
Nor the blind, though you are given sight ; 
Nor the sick, though you are strong; 
Nor the dull, though you are clever ; 
Nor the foolish, though you are wise. 



Be not too wise, be not too foolish ; 

Be not too conceited, be not too diffident ; 

Be not too haughty, be not too humble ; 

Be not too talkative, be not too silent ; 

Be not too harsh, be not too feeble. 

If you be too wise, they will expect (too much) of you; 

If you be too foolish, you will be deceived ; 

If you be too conceited, you will be thought vexatious ; 

If you be too humble, you v/ill be without honor; 

If you be too talkative, you will not be heeded ; 

If you be too silent, you will not be regarded; 

If you be too harsh, you will be broken ; 

If you be too feeble, you will be crushed." 



52 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

them conclude that the foundations of it at least are Cormac's. 
All of them agree that it is a noteworthy product of a very ancient 
lawgiver. Archbishop Hcaly, however, says its authenticity "is 
proven beyond doubt." 

The third great woric attributed to Cormac is the Psaltair na 
Tara. This is no longer in existence, and is known only by the 
frequent references to it of ancient chronologists, genealogists, 
seanachies, and poets — which references prove that it was a rich 
mine of very ancient historic and genealogic information, and that 
it was regarded as the greatest and most reliable authority of the 
very early days. The Book of Ballymote records that it contained 
"the synchronisms and genealogies as well as succession of the 
kings, the battles, etc., of antiquity, and this is the Psaltair of Tara, 
which is the origin and the fountain of the historians of Eirinn 
from that period, down to the present time." 

The learned O'Curry thinks the Psaltair was in existence a 
long time before Cormac, and that Cormac altered and enlarged 
it to bring it up to his time. He further says : "We have reason 
to believe that the age of writing existed here, long before Cor- 
mac's reign." And Healy in talking about that remarkable monu- 
ment of ancient lore says: "It proves to a certainty that in 
the third century of the Christian Era, there was a considerable 
amount of literary culture in Ireland." 

O' Flaherty says of Cormac, "His literary productions, still ex- 
tant, show him a wonderful legislator and antiquarian." 

This remarkable king died in the year 267 — more than a cen- 
tury and a half before the coming of St. Patrick. By reason of 
his extraordinary wisdom, the righteousness of his deeds, judg- 
ments and laws, he is said to hav^e been blest with the light of the 
Christian faith seven years before his death. There is an ancient 
tract called Releg na RIogh preserved in the Book of the Dun Cow, 
which records — "For Cormac had the faith of the one true God, 
according to the law; for he said he would not adore stones, or 
trees, but that he would adore Him who made them, and who had 
power over all the elements, i.e., the one powerful God, who 
created the elements: in Him he would believe. And he was the 
third person who had believed in Erin, before the arrival of St. 
Patrick. Concobar MacNessa to whom Altus had told concerning 
the Crucifixion of Christ, was the first; Morann, son of Cairbri 
Cinncait (who was surnamed MacMaein), was the second per- 
son; and Cormac was the third; and it is possible that others fol- 
lowed on their track, in this belief." 

O'Curry, however, records a fourth pagan who was said to 



CORMAC MAC ART 53 

have got the faith by inspiration — Art, the father of Cormac, and 
son of Conn of the Hundred Battles, who, tradition says, believed 
on the eve of the battle of Magh Mocruime — the great battle in 
which he was to be overthrown and slain by Lugaid MacCon. 

The traditions about Cormac also state that having been in- 
spired by the faith he made dying request that he should be buried, 
not with the other pagan kings at their famous burying ground, 
Brugh-na-Boinne, but at Ros na Riogh looking toward the East, 
whence would dawn the holy light that should make Eirinn radiant. 
Disregarding his dying wish, the Druids ordered that he should be 
interred with his ancestors at Brugh of Boyne. But when, in pur- 
suance of this, the bearers were bearing his body across the river, 
a great wave swept it from their shoulders, down the stream, and 
cast it up at Ros na Riogh, where, according to his wish, he was 
then buried. 



CHAPTER XI 

TARA 

Tara, which attained the climax of its fame under Cormac, is said 
to have been founded by the Firbolgs, and been the seat of kings 
thenceforth. Ollam Fodla first gave it historic fame by founding 
the Feis or triennial Parliament, there, seven or eight centuries 
before Christ. O'Curry says it was under, or after, Eremon, the 
first Milesian high-king that it, one of the three pleasantest hills 
in Ireland, came to be named Tara — a corruption of the genitive 
form of the compound word, Tea-Mur — meaning "the burial place 
of Tea," the wife of Eremon, and daughter of a King of Spain. 

In its heyday Tara must have been impressive. The great, 
beautiful hill was dotted with seven duns, and in every dun were 
many buildings — all of them, of course, of wood, in those days — 
or of wood and metal. 

The greatest structure there was the Mi-Cuarta, the great 
banqueting hall, which was on the Ard-Righ's own dun. There 
was also the House of a Thousand Soldiers, the ancient poets tell 
us. Each of the provincial kings had, on Tara, a house that was 
set aside for him when he came up to attend the great Parliament. 
There was a Grianan (sun-house) for the provincial queens, and 
their attendants. The Stronghold of the Hostages was one of the 
structures. Another was the Star of the Bards — a meeting-house 
for the poets and the historians, the doctors and judges. This 
latter was built by Cormac. He also rebuilt the great banqueting 
hall, the Mi-Cuarta, wherein at the great triennial Feis, all the 
kings, and chiefs and nobles, the Ollams or doctors, the Brehons 
or judges, the Files or poets, and the Seanachies or historians, were 
seated according to rank. 

There every warrior sat under his own shield, which hung upon 
the wall above the place reserved for its owner. The upper end 
of the hall was reserved for the Ollams, the Brehons, the Files, 
the Seanachies, the Musicians, and other professors of learned 
arts and sciences. The lords of territories occupied one side of 
the hall, and the captains of armies, the other side. 

54 



TAR A 55 

When a banquet was spread in the Hall of Ml-Cuarta or when 
a session of the Feis was to begin, the following was the form gone 
through. — The Hall was first cleared of all but three, a genealogist, 
a marshal, a trumpeter. Then, at a word from the marshal, the 
trumpeter sounded his horn, in response to which came the shield- 
bearers of the chiefs and nobles, gathering at an open door. The 
marshal took the shield of each, and under the direction of the 
genealogist, hung it in its proper place, above the seat that was 
thereby reserved for its owner. A second time the trumpeter 
sounded his horn — which now brought to the door the shield- 
bearers of the captains. Then the marshal, under the direction of 
the genealogist, hung the warriors' shields in order. Again the 
trumpeter blew a blast. And to this third blast answered the 
nobles and the warriors, who filed in, and took each his place 
beneath his own shield — "so that there was neither confusion nor 
contention for places among them." 

The great Feis was held at Samain (Hallowday) . It lasted for 
three days before Samain and three days after. But the Aonach 
or great fair, the assembly of the .people in general, which was a 
most important accompaniment of the Feis, seems to have begun 
much earlier. 

At the gathering in the Mi-Cuarta, the Ard-Righ of Eirinn 
sat mid-way of the hall, facing West, the King of Ulster sat at his 
right hand, the King of Munster at his left, the King of Leinster 
faced him, and the King of Connaught sat behind him. Naturally, 
at such state assemblies the participants arrayed themselves in such 
splendour as those ages sanctioned. Cormac MacArt's appearance 
at the Feis of Tara is thus colourfully described by one of the an- 
cient poets : 

"Splendidly does Cormac come into this great assembly; for the 
equal of his form has not appeared, excepting Conaire Mor, son of 
Eidersgeal ; or Concobar, the son of Catbbad ; or Aengus, the son 
of the Daghda. 

"Beautiful was the appearance of Cormac in that assembly. 
Flowing, slightly curling, golden hair, upon him. A red buckler, 
with stars and animals of gold and fastenings of silver, upon him. 
A crimson cloak in wide descending folds upon him, fastened at his 
breast by a golden brooch set with precious stones. A neck-tore of 
gold around his neck.^ A white shirt, with a full collar, and inter- 

1 That the wonderful, remarkable description of Tara's ancient greatness, 
glory, and luxury; is not any figment of the fancy of the hundreds of ancient poets 
who sang its praises, is evidenced in many ways, not the least noteworthy of which 
is the silent testimony of the valuable and rarely beautiful ornaments which in re- 
cent times have been dug up there — amongst others, two splendid gold tores 



56 THE STORY OF THE IRISH R.\CE 

twined with red gold thread, upon him. A girdle of gold inlaid 
with precious stones around him. Two wonderful shoes of gold, 
with runnings of gold, upon him. Two spears with golden sockets 
in his hand, and with many rivets of red bronze. And he was, be- 
sides, himself symmetrical and beautiful of form, without blemish or 
reproach." 

At this Pels the ancient laws were recited and confirmed, new 
laws were enacted, disputes were settled, grievances adjusted, 
wrongs righted. And in accordance with the usual form at all such 
assemblies, the ancient history of the land was recited, probably by 
the high-king's seanachle, who had the many other critical seana- 
chles attending to his every word, and who, accordingly, dare not 
seriously distort or prevaricate. This constant and continual 
repetition, down through the ages, of the ever lengthening history 
— repeated, too, almost always In the presence of many critics — 
fixed the facts of the past story, and familiarised them to all the 
people. And while plenty of poetic colouring and artistic exag- 
geration was undoubtedly permitted to the poet-historian, the bas.ic 
truths, ever had to be, preserved Inviolate. This highly efficient 
method of recording and transmitting the country's history, in 
verse, too, which was practised for a thousand years before the 
Introduction of writing, and the introduction of Christianity — and 
which continued to be practised for long centuries after these events 
— was a highly practical method, which effectively preserved for 
us the large facts of our country's history throughout a thousand 
of the years of dim antiquity — when the history of most other 
countries is a dreary blank. 

Every prince had his own seanachle, a man who, having studied 
twelve years under masters, was well versed in the history of 
Ireland in general and in the history of his own principality, in 
particular. For more easy memorising and thus familiarising the 
multitude with the facts and the more surely to guard against in- 
correct repetition, all Irish histories and chronicles were, in these 
early ages, cast In verse. For the seanachle had to make the studies 
of a poet as well as of an historian, and to have intimate acquaint- 
ance with the hundreds of kinds of Irish verse. 

And since, at all minor assemblies, and even at small gather- 
ings, the seanachle was constantly requisitioned for the purpose of 
reciting passages of history, all of the people down to the humblest 

(bands of twisted gold worn around the neck), one of them being five feet seven 
inches in length, weighing twenty-seven ounces, and the other of large si;:e also, 
.ind weighing twelve ounces. Both of them are beautifully wrought. 



TARA 57 

had that pride of race, of clan, and of family, which results from 
familiarity with their great achievements. Their marvellously or- 
ganised methods of recording and transmitting history signalises 
the Gael among the peoples of ancient time — just as their ancient 
Parliament signalised them. 

As from the great heart and centre of the Irish kingdom, five 
great arteries or roads radiated from Tara to the various parts 
of the country — the Slighe Cualann, which ran toward the present 
County Wicklow; the Slighe Mor, the great Western road, which 
ran via Duhlin to Galway; the Slighe Asail which ran near the 
present Muhingar; the Slighe Dala which ran Southwest; and the 
Slighe Midluachra, the Northern road. 

Great, noble and beautiful truly was our Tara of the Kings.' 

2 Another much storied, ver>' ancient royal residence was Ailech in Inishowen, 
said to have been founded by the Dagda, and where, long afterwards, but still in 
very ancient times, a wonderful, beautiful residence was said to have been erected 
by a famous builder, Frigrind, who had eloped with Ailech, the daughter of the 
Kirfg of Alba. It was for her that he built within the great stone fort of Ailech 
(which fort still stands a monument to the pre-historic builders) this beautiful 
house which a poet of the far-off days says was of red hue, carved and em- 
blazoned with gold and bronze, and so thick-set with shining gems that day and 
night were equally bright within it. It was in the beginning of the fourth century 
the legend days, that Frigrind erected this notable structure. Two centuries earlier 
Ptolemy, the Egyptian geographer, had properly located this royal residence upon 
his map of Ireland. 

At the famous Western royal residence of Rath-Cruachain, the house of Medb 
and .A.ilill is poetically pictured by another of the ancients, in the very old tale of 
the Tain Bo Fraich : — "The manner of that house was this : There were seven 
companies in it ; seven compartments from the fire to the wall, all round the house. 
Every compartment had a front of bronze. The whole was composed of beau- 
tifully carved red yew. Three strips of bronze were in the front of each com- 
partment. Seven strips of bronze irom the foundation of the house to the ridge. 
The house from this out was built of pine. A covering of oak shingles was what 
was upon it on the outside. Sixteen windows was the number that were in it, for 
the purpose of looking out of it and for admitting light into it. A shutter of 
bronze to each window. A bar of bronze across each shutter; four times seven 
ungas of bronze was what each bar contained. Ailill and Medb's compartment 
was made altogether of bronze: and it was situated in the middle of the house, 
with a front of silver and gold around it. There was a silver band at one side 
of it, which ror>e to the ridge of the house, and reached all round it from the one 
door to the otlier. The arms of the giiests were hung up above the arms of all 
other persons iu that house ; and they sat themselves down, and were bade wel- 
come." 

This l^th was a circular stone fort of dry masonry, with wall thirteen feet 
thick at the ba*e. and surrounded by five concentric ramparts, traces of three of 
which are still to be seen. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE FAIRS 

The holding of the Fels of Tara was the occasion also for holding 
a great Aonach or fair. Almost all the great periodic assemblages 
of ancient Ireland had fairs in their train. 

After that of Tara the most famous of these periodic assem- 
blies were those held at Tlachtga, Uisnech, Cruachan and Taillte 
— the three royal residences in those three portions of the royal 
domain of Meath, which had been annexed from Leinster, Munster, 
Connaught and Ulster, respectively. Also the Fair of Emain 
Macha (in the present county of'Armagh), the Fair of Colmain on 
the Curragh of Kildare, and the famous Fair of Carman (Wex- 
ford). 

As mentioned, some of the fairs originated as accompaniment 
to serious state or provincial representative assemblages. Many 
fairs, however, had their beginning in commemorative funeral 
games, at the grave of some notable — as the Fair of Emain Macha 
was instituted in memory of the great Ulster queen. 

In the case of a fair which was not instituted as the accompani- 
ment of a Feis, a Feis usually developed as an accompaniment of 
the fair. 

For at all such fairs the chiefs, the judges, the scholars, and 
other leading ones held deliberative assemblies, on a certain day 
or days, during the fair's progress. Also it was an Invariable part 
of the pleasure and the profit of the fair gathering, that the best 
seanachies, poets, and genealogists in attendance should gather 
the crowds, and recite to them portions of the history of the coun- 
try, province, or tuath (district) ; the deeds of the great ones gone 
before; the praises of the great ones who still walked the land; 
the legends and traditions; and the genealogies of the principal 
families. 

There were certain two of these gatherings, those of Emain 
Macha and Cruachan, whereat an important concern was the selec- 
tion and examination of candidates for the various crafts, and the 
certificating the successful ones. As described by Keating, the 
candidates presented themselves before a board constituted of the 
King, the Ollams, chiefs and nobles, who examined and passed 

58 



THE FAIRS 



59 



upon each, giving him tlie right to practise the craft or trade that 
he ambitioned. 

At Emain and Cruachan, as well as at Tara, the assemblages 
were primarily political. They were conventions of representa- 
tives from all parts, for the purpose of discussing national affairs — 
and were presided over by the king. 

The yearly Fair of Taillte (now Telltown) in Meath, was 
mainly for athletic contests — and for this was long famous 
throughout Eirinn, Alba, and Britain. In the course of time, too, 
Taillte acquired new fame as a marriage mart. Boys and girls, 
in thousands, were brought there by their parents, who matched 
them, and bargained about their tinnscra (dowry) — in a place set 
apart for the purpose, whose Gaelic name, signifying marriage- 
hollow, still commemorates its purpose. The games of Taillte 
were Ireland's Olympics, and, we may be sure, caused as keen com- 
petition and high excitement as ever did the Grecian. These Taill- 
tin games took place during the first week of August — and the first 
of August, to this day, is commonly called Lugnasad — the games of 
the De Danann Lugh, who first instituted this gathering in memory 
of his foster-mother, Taillte. Another great assemblage for games 
and sports was held by the Ulstermen during the three days of 
Samain — on the plain of Muiremne (in Louth). 

The last Fair of Taillte was celebrated in the year in which 
the first English invaders came into Ireland — in 1169. It was held 
by order of the High-King, Roderic O'Connor — and is recorded 
by The Four Masters, who state that the horses and chariots, 
alone, carrying people to this Fair, extended from Taillte to near 
Kells, a distance of six miles. 

The great fairs and Feisanna were regarded as of such over- 
whelming national Importance that special and exceptional laws 
and ordinances were instituted to insure their proper carrying out. 
For such occasion the king's peace was proclaimed for all. Dur- 
ing its continuance all fugitives from justice walked free men 
amongst free men. At the fair, going to it, and returning from it, 
no oppressed debtor could be molested, arrested, or distrained for 
his debt. On the eve of a feis or fair all personal ornaments, rings, 
bracelets, or brooches, that had been pawned to relieve financial 
distress, or impounded for debts overdue, must, for the time of 
the assemblage, be released to their owners. The creditor who re- 
fused to release them was heavily fined for the mental suffering 
caused those who were forced to the disgrace of appearing without 
adornment at the great festive gatherings, whereat all the nation 
appeared in its richest, most beautiful, and best. 



6o THE S'lORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Another wise law provided for the peace of gatherings where 
mingled friend and foe, where heads and hearts were light, and 
where blood ran high. Any man royal or simple, who broke the 
king's peace, was to be punished with death. In the days of Colm 
Cille, even the saint's privilege of sanctuary failed to save a king's 
son who had disturbed the peace of the Fair. The law of the Fair 
was inflexible. Says an ancient writer, *'They were carried out 
without breach of law, without crime, without violence, without 
dishonour. There was one universal Fair truce." 

Surely, highly commendable was the spirit, and highly credit- 
able the prudence, of the ancient lawmakers, which hedged with 
wise precautions these beautiful days of jubilee provided for a 
highly sociable and gregarious, but clannish and quick-tempered 
people, who equally loved sporting and battling, the matching of 
power in games, civil or warlike. 

Joyce points out that there were three objects fulfilled by these 
great gatherings. Here the people learnt their laws, their rights, 
the past history of their country, the warlike deeds of their ances- 
tors. Here also they got their relaxation and enjoyment, in the 
music, the poetry, the fun, the games, and the sports, provided for 
them. And here, likewise, were their markets^ for buying, selling 
and exchanging. It should be added that a fourth most import- 
ant function of the fairs was the opportunity they provided for 
mating and marrying the young, and thereby drawing closer the 
relationship of families and clans who had been distant, or at 
enmity. 

Studying the account of "the fun at the fair" in those faraway 
days one is struck by the slightness of the change which the lapse 
of a couple of thousand years has effected. Besides athletic feats 
and racing of horses and chariots they had there — we quote from 
the poem on the Fair of Carman: 

"Trumpets, harps, wide-mouthed horns ; 
Cruisechs, timpanists, without fail, 
Poets, ballad singers and groups of agile jugglers, 
Pipers, fiddlers, banded men. 
Bow-men and flute players, 
The host of chattering bird-like fliers, 
Shouters and loud bellowers, 
These all exert themselves to the utmost." 

^ They had three different markets there — 

"A market for food, a market for live cattle, 
The great market of the foreign Greeks 
In which are gold and noble raiment." 



THE FAIRS 6 1 

The fame of the great fair of Carman is perpetuated by an 
ancient poem, preserved in the Book of Ballymote and in the Book 
of Leinster. The description of the Carman fair given in this 
poem may well convey to us a general picture of all those ancient 
Irish fairs. Here are set down some excerpts from the version 
given in the Appendix to O' Curry: 

"Listen, O Lagenians of the monuments! 
Ye truth-upholding hosts! 
Until you get from me, from every source, 
The pleasant history of far famed Carman. 

"Carman, the field of a splendid fair, 

With a widespread unobstructed green 
The hosts wlio came to celebrate it. 
On it they contested their noble races. 

"The renowned field is the cemetery of kings, 
The dearly loved of noble grades ; 
There are many meeting mounds, 
For their ever-loved ancestral hosts. 

"To mourn for queens and for Icings, 

To denounce aggression and tyranny. 
Often were the fair hosts in autumn 
Upon the smooth brow of noble old Carman. 

"Heaven, earth, sun, moon, and sea, 
Fruits, fire, and riches, 
Mouths, cars, alluring cjes. 
Feet, hands, noses, and teeth — 

"Steeds, swords, beautiful chariots, 
Spears, shields, human faces. 
Dew, fruits, blossoms, and foliage, 
Day and night, a heavy flooded shore — 

"These in fulness all were there. 

The tribes of Banba without lasting grief, — 
To be under the protection of the fair. 
Every third year, without prohibition. 

"The gentiles of the Gaedhil did celebrate. 
In Carman, to be highly boasted of, 
A fair without (breach of) law, without crime, 
Without a deed of violence, without dishonor. 



62 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

"On the Kalends of August without fail, 
They repaired thither every third year ; 
There aloud with boldness they proclaimed 
The rights of every law, and the restraints." 

The forbidden things are enumerated: 

"To sue, to levy, to controvert debts, — 
The abuse of steeds in their career. 
Is not allowed to contending racers, — 
Elopements, arrests, distraints — 

"That no man goes into the women's Airecht, 

That no women go into the Airecht of fair clean men ; 

That no abduction is heard of, 

Nor repudiation of husbands or of wives — 

"Whoever transgresses the law of the assembly — 

Which Benen with accuracy indelibly wrote, — 
Cannot be spared upon family composition. 
But he must die for his transgression." 

The music at the fair : 

"There are its many great privileges; — 

Trumpets, Cruits, wide-mouthed horns. 
Cuisigs, Timpanists without weariness. 
Poets and petty rhymesters." 

The literary entertainment provided consisted of stories, philos- 
ophy, history, and so forth. 

"Fenian tales of Find, — an untiring entertainment. — 
Destructions, Cattle-preys, Courtships. 
Inscribed tablets, and books of trees. 
Satires, and sharp edged runes ; 

"Proverbs, maxims, royal precepts, 

And the truthful instructions of Fithal, 
Occult poetry, topographical et^-mologies. 
The precepts of Cairbri and of Cormac ; 

"The Feasts, with the great Feast of Teamar, 
Fairs, with the fair of Emania; 
Annals there are verified. 
Every division into which Erin was divided ; 



THE FAIRS 63 

"The history of the household of Teamar — not insig;nificant — 
The knowledge of every territory in Erin, 
The history of the women of illustrious families, 
Of Courts, Prohibitions, Conquests ; 

"The noble Testament of Cathair the Great 

To his descendants, to direct the steps of royal rule 

Each one sits in his lawful place, 

So that all attend to them to listen, listen. 

"Pipes, fiddles, chainmen. 

Bow-men, and tube-players, 

A crowd of babbling painted masks, 

Roarers and loud bellowers. 

"They all exert their utmost powers 

For the magnanimous king of the Barrow ; 
Until the noble king in proper measure bestows 
Upon each art its rightful meed. 

"Elopements, slaughters, musical choruses. 

The accurate synchronisms of noble races, 

The succession of the sovereign kings of Bregia, 

Their battles, and their stem valour. 

"Such is the arrangement of the fair, 
By the lively ever happy host;-^- 
May they receive from the Lord 
A land with choicest fruits." 



CHAPTER XIII 

FIONN AND THE FIAN 

It is only recently that we have realised the all-important part 
played by legendary lore in forming and stamping a nation's char- 
acter. A people's character and a people's heritage of tradition 
act and react upon each other, down the ages, the outstanding qual- 
ities of both getting ever more and more alike — so long as their 
racial traditions are cherished as an intimate part of their life. 
But the people's character gets a new direction on the day that 
there comes into their life any influence which lessens their loving 
regard for the past. 

Than the Gaelic, the world has known but few races that were 
enriched with a richer heritage of legend — poetic, romantic, heroic, 
idealistic, wondrous, humorous — which in ancient ages sprang from 
the souls of the nation's noblest, and through all subsequent days 
nurtured the minds and souls of the multitude. In these wonder- 
ful traditions every ancient great poet and teacher lives, and leads 
his listening people, for all time. 

Of all the great bodies of ancient Irish legendary lore, none 
other, with the possible exception of the Red Branch cycle, has had 
such developing, uplifting, and educational effect upon the Irish 
people, through the ages, as the wonderful body of Fenian tales — - 
in both prose and verse, rich in quality and rich in quantity. 

Fionn MacCumail (F'inn MacCool), leader of the Fian (Fen- 
ians), in the time of Cormac MacArt, is the great central figure of 
these tales. Fionn and the Fian were not figments of the ancient 
poets' fancy — as think some who know of this lore only by hear- 
say. The man Fionn lived and died in the third century of the 
Christian Era. The Four Masters chronicle his death on the 
Boyne, under A. D. 283 — though he must have died some years 
earlier. Fionn's father Cumal, was chief of the Fian, in his day; 
and his grandfather, Treun-Mor, chief before that. In contrast 
to the Red Branch which was of Ulster, the Fian was of Munster 
and Leinster origin.^ Connaught with its Clan na Morna con- 
tributed largely to the body, later. 

1 Fionn's clan. Oan na Baoiscne (which H'as the heart of the Fian) belonged 
in North Munster. 

64 



FIONN AND THE FIAN 65 

It was in the reign of Conn, at the very end of the second, or 
beginning of the third century that was founded the Fian — a great 
standing army of picked and specially trained, daring warriors, 
whose duty was to carry out the mandates of the high-king — "To 
uphold justice and put down injustice, on the part of the kings and 
lords of Ireland — and to guard the harbors from foreign invaders." 
From this latter we might conjecture that an expected Roman in- 
vasion first called the Fian into existence. 

They were soldiers in time of war, and a national police in 
time of peace. We are informed that they prevented robberies, 
exacted fines and tributes, put down public enemies and every kind 
of evil that might afflict the country. Moreover they moved about 
from place to place, all over the island. During the summer and 
harvest, from Beltinne to Samain — May first till November first — 
they camped in the open, and lived by ^e chase. During the win- 
ter half-year they were quartered upon the people. 

But Pionn, being a chieftain himself in his own right, had a 
residence on the hill of Allen (Almuin) in Kildare. An old poem 
(quoted by O'Mahony) pictures it as a very palatial residence, In- 
deed: 

"I feasted in the hall of Fionn, 
And at each banquet there I saw 
A thousand ricli cups on his board, 
Whose rims were bound with purest gold. 

"And twelve great buildings once stood there, 
The dwellings of those mighty hosts, 
Ruled by Tadg's daughter's warlike son, 
At Alma of the noble Fian, 

"And constantly there burned twelve fires, 
Within each princely house of these, 
And round each flaming hearth there sat 
A hundred warriors of the Fian." 

The Flanna^ recruited at the great fairs, especially at Tara, 
Uisnech, and Taillte, The greatest discrimination was used in 
choosing the eligible ones from amongst the candidate throng — 
which throng included in plenty sons of chieftains and princes. 

But no candidate would be considered unless he, his family, 
and clan, were prepared philosophically to accept for him life or 

2 Fianna, meaning bodies of the Fian, is the plural of the collective noun, Fian. 



66 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

death, all the daily hazards of a hazardous career — and that his 
family and his clan should, from the day he joined the Fian, re- 
nounce all claims to satisfaction or vengeance for his injuring or 
ending. His comrades must henceforth be his moral heirs and 
executors, who would seek and get the satisfaction due if he were 
wounded or killed by any means that violated the code of honor 
and justice. And, it should here be remarked that the high ethical 
code of the Red Branch Knights in the days of Christ was not any 
more admirable than the code of justice and of honor observed 
now, two centuries after, by the Fian. 

Many and hard were the tests for him who sought to be of the 
noble body. 

One of the first tests was literary: for no candidate was pos- 
sible who had not mastered the twelve books of poetry. With 
this condition in mind one will no longer wonder that the Fian 
bequeathed to posterity ten thousand fragrant tales. 

In a trench, the depth of the knee, the candidate, with a shield 
and hazel staff only, must protect himself from nine warriors, cast- 
ing javelins at him from nine ridges away. 

Given the start of a single tree, in a thick wood, he has to 
escape unwounded from fleet pursuers. 

So skilful must he be in wood-running, and so agile, that In the 
flight no single braid of his hair is loosed by a hanging branch. 

His step must be so light that underfoot he breaks no withered 
branch. 

In his course he must bound over branches th» height of his 
forehead, and stoop under others the height of his knee, without 
delaying, or leaving a trembling branch behind. 

Without pausing in his flight he must pick from his foot the 
thorn that it has taken up. 

In facing the greatest odds the weapon must not shake in his 
hand. 

When a candidate had passed the tests, and was approved as 
fit for this heroic band, there were four geasa (vows of chivalry) 
laid upon him, as the final condition of his admission: 

1. He shall marry his wife without portion— choosing her 
for her manners and her virtues. 

2. He shall be gentle with all women. 

3. He shall never reserve to himself anything which another 
person stands in need of. 

4. He shall stand fight to all odds, as far as nine to one. 
Hard, then, was the task of him who entered the ranks of the 



FIONN AND THE FIAN 67 

noble Flan. But in the ensuing life of beauteous adventure, the 
fortunate one was recompensed an hundred-fold. 

Roaming and roving from end to end of the Island, hunting 
and fighting, feasting and love-making, the Fian made legend every 
day of their lives. New romance dawned for them with the dawn- 
ing of each new day. Adventure and poetry marched with them, 
on either hand. They lived exciting history; they breakfasted with 
song, supped with entrancing story, and, on their three beds of 
branches, rushes and moss, bedded with rare dreams of yesterday's 
pleasuring and the morrow's daring. Their own warrior-poets 
chanted for them their own heroic deeds; their own musicians' 
carolled, and their own sgeuladoirs (story-tellers) charmed their 
.leisure hour with blithesome tale. They left lasting impression on 
every hill, and vale, and stream from North to South, from East to 
West, of the Island. They hung rare tales of themselves on every 
rowan-tree, and ten thousand great grey rocks that stud the Island's 
face, are monuments immortal, proclaiming to the wondering gen- 
erations, "Here passed Fionn and his Fian."^ 

There were three cathas (battalions) of the Fian — three thou- 
sand in each catha. This, in time of peace. In time of war, the 
quota was seven cathas. And twenty-one thousand such men, 
trained in agility and in strength, and in marvellous feats of arms, 
by their mode of life hardened against all hardships, accustomed 
to reckless daring, and familiar with death, must have been a for- 
midable weapon in the hands of the High King, and insured re- 
spect for him, for his laws and his commands, in the hearts of all 
men in the remotest corners of the country. 

Keating says they ate only one meal a day, the evening meal. 
When the chase was ended at the day's end, they encamped in a 
pleasant place, and dug their dinner-pits, at the bottom of which 

3 xhe sceptic who is eager to discount the singular pre-eminence, physical, spir- 
itual, and intellectual, of the ancient Gael says : "Ah, but all those fine things are the 
fictions of far-away poets !" Even if we gratuitously discard the compelling pile of 
contrary evidence, supplied by the poems and the histories, by the ancient legends 
and the ancient laws, and thoughtlessly assume with him that the fineness of an- 
cient Gaelic character is a fiction of the old-time poets, — then such beautiful fic- 
tions of such beautiful ideals, by themselves presume and prove a beautiful-souled 
people, capable of appreciating lofty ideals. The greatest poet is never more 
than a hand's breadth higher than his people. And if the song he sings lives after 
him forever, that is proof conclusive that the people who cherished it, and passed 
it on to future ages, could see his visions, speak his language, and hear with him 
the music of the spheres. In any age, and of any race, the visions (fictions) of the 
poet, are only the reflections from the mirror of heaven's dome of the souls of his 
people. So for the purpose of constructing for us of to-day a true picture of our 
forefathers, their thoughts, their deeds, their character, their height, their depth, 
and limitations, every merest myth and legend is a fact four-square, ready for 
the building. 



68 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

they built fires that made the dinner-stones red hot. On the stones 
they laid the meat, wrapped in green rushes, and buried it while it 
broiled. They repaired to the nearby stream to bathe — then 
combed and plaited their hair — after which they were eager for 
their great meal. When they had eaten, they seated themselves 
on the ground, in circle around a big log-fire, while one or other of 
their myriad gifted bards and story-tellers entertained them with 
poem, with story, with history and with legend, till sleep stole over 
their tired limbs, and they couched them beneath fragrant branches 
— on "the three beddings of the Fian" — first green boughs, over 
that green moss, and finally green rushes. 

Although the Fianna were supposed to uphold the power of 
the Ard-Righ, their oath of fealt}' was not to him, but to their own 
chief. 

And in course of time, in the reign of Cairbre Lifeachar, son 
of Cormac, they revolted against the Ard-Righ — Fionn and his 
Fian joining Breasil, king of Leinster, in resisting Cairbre's levy- 
ing of the Boru tribute. Cairbre met with overwhelming defeat 
at the battle of Cnamros — where he is said to have left nine thou- 
sand dead upon the field. 

One reason for their revolt was because Cairbre had favoured 
the Clan na Morna, the Connaught branch of the Fian, from 
whom Fionn had formerly usurped pov.er and favour for his own 
branch, the Clan na Baoscni. Cairbre had put away the latter, 
and made the former, under their leader Aedh the Comely, his 
buannachl (paid soldiers) . 

Also, from enjoying too much power too long, the Clan na 
Baoscni had got arrogant. Amongst other privileges which they 
came to claim as their right was that no maiden in the land, of 
any rank, should marry outside the Fian unless she was first offered 
in marriage to the eligible in their ranks. And when at length 
they demanded gold tribute from Cairbre himself, because, with- 
out asking their approval, he chose to marry his beautiful daugh- 
ter, Sgeimsolas (Light of Beauty) to a chief of the Deisi, the final 
break befell. They allied themselves with the King of Munster, 
Mogh Corb, whose mother, Samair, was a daughter of Fionn, and 
whose father, Cormac Cas, was son to the great Oilill Olum, son 
of Mogh Nuadat. Since it was Goll MacMorna who had slain 
Mogh Nuadat on the field of .Moylena, the Munstermen had double 
reason for allying with the Clan na Baoscni against the Clan na 
Morna and their master, Cairbre. 

In the year 280 A. D., both sides met in death grapple at the 
battle of Gabra — one of the fiercest fights of ancient times. Olsin, 



FIONN AND THE FIAN 69 

the son of Fionn (who was now dead), led the Fian. Oisin's son, 
Oscar, the most powerful fighter of the Fian, was killed in single 
combat by Cairbre. And the Fianna, who had so long filled such 
a shining part in Ireland's history, were annihilated/ Though 
Cairbre's army and the Clan na Morna under Aedh, won, they 
had but little to boast of — and not a large number of them were 
left to boast. Cairbre carried himself out of the battle, but, as 
he returned to Tara, was killed by one of his own kin. Aedh the 
Comely survived; and Mogh Corb escaped. These two leaders 
afterwards renewed the fight in Muskerry, where Aedh killed 
Mogh. 

But the Fian na h-Eireann were gone forever. 

Yet, though dead, they live. The lays of Oisin, the Dialogue 
of the Ancients, and innumerable other Finian poems and tales 
have kept, and will keep, their name and their fame imperishable.^ 
Not only is the Fian in general immortalised, but the names, the 
qualities, and the characteristics of every one of Fionn's trusted 
lieutenants — Oscar who never wronged bard or woman, Gol the 
mighty, Caoilte the sweet-tongued, Diarmuid Donn the beautiful, 
the bitter-tongued Conan, and the rest of them, have lived and 
will live. Even their hounds are with us, immortal. Bran, Sgeo- 
lan, and their famed fellows still follow the stag over the wooded 
hills of Eirinn, and wake the echoes of our mountain glens, by their 
bay melodious. 

"The two hounds which belonged to Fionn. 

When they were let loose through Glen Rath ; 
Were sweeter than musical instruments, 
And their face outwards from the Suir." 

In every corner of Ireland to the remotest headland, the stories 
of the Fian awake the admiration, and excite the emulation of our 
people. Round every hearth, in every cottage, on every hillside in 
Eirinn, the Fian is the enchanted word with which the seanachie 
awakes the instant interest and for as long as he likes holds the 
spellbound attention of man and child, of learned and simple, rich 
and poor, old and young. 

The best of the stories of the Fian are preserved to us in the 
poems of Oisin, the son of Fionn, the chief bard of the Fian, in the 

* One old tale has it that Oisin and Caoilte were the only ones of the Fian who 
escaped with their lives from the battle. 

'• Leerend says thej' had four leading poets — Fionn, his two sons, Oisin and 
FergTJs Fir.nbeoil, and Caoilte. 



70 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Agallamh na Seanorach, and many other fine poems of olden time. 

The Agallam na Seanorach (the Colloquy of the Ancients), 
by far the finest collection of Fenian tales, is supposed to be an 
account of the Plan's great doings, given in to Patrick by Oisin 
and Caoilte — more than 150 years after. 

After the overthrow of the Fian, Caoilte is supposed to have 
lived with the Tuatha De Danann, under the hills — until the com- 
ing of St. Patrick. Oisin had been carried away to the Land of 
Youth, under the western ocean. Both of them return to their 
mortal existence, and to Ireland, when Patrick is in the land, win- 
ning it from Crom Cruach to Christ. Patrick meets and converts 
each of them. They attach themselves to his company, and travel 
Ireland with him. When the Saint is wearied from much travelling 
and work, or, as often happens, from the perversity of the people 
he has to deal with, Oisin or Caoilte refresh and beguile him with 
many a sweet tale of the Fian — all of which, says the tradition, the 
pleased Patrick had his scribe Breogan write down and preserve 
for posterity. These tales make the Agallam na Seanorach. 

The tired Patrick would say: 

"Oisin, sweet to me is thy voice! 

A blessing on the soul of Fionn — 
And relate to iis the great deer-hunt 
That day in Sliab-nam-Ban-Fionn."' 

Often however Oisin, old, blind, and bitterly remembering the 
happy long-gone days, was far from sweet in tongue or temper. 

"Oh, Patrick, sad is the tale, 

To be after the heroes, thus feeble ; 

Listening to clerics and to bells, 

Whilst I am a poor, blind, and old man. 

"If Fionn and the Fenians lived, 

I would abandon the clerics and the bells; 
I would follow the deer from the glen, 
And would fain lay hold of his foot." 

He was ever longing for by-gone joys — 

"The warbling of the blackbird of Litir Lee, 
The wave of Rughraidhe lashing the shore; 
The bellowing of the ox of Magh-maoin, 
And the lowing of the calf of Gleann-da-maoil. 



FIONN AND THE FIAN 71 

"The resounding of the chase on Sliab g-Crot, 
The noise of the fawns around Sliab Cua ; 
The sea-gulls scream on Lorrus, yonder, 
Or the screech of the ravens over the battlefield. 

"The tossing of the hulls of the barks by the wave, 
The yell of the hounds at Drumlish ; 
The cry of Bran at Cnoc-an-air> 
Or the murmur of the streams about Sliab Mis. 

"Oh, delight to Fionn and the heroes 

Was the cry of his hounds afar on the mountain ; 

The wolves starting from their dens, 

The exultation of his hosts, that was his delight. 

And Oisin could never comprehend why Fionn and the Flan 
should, or could, now be In Hell — 

"What did Fionn do to God, 

Except to attend on hosts and schools; 

A great while bestowing gold, 

And another while delighting in his hounds. 

"Were the Clanna Morna within [in Hell] 
Or the Clanna Baoiscne, the mighty men; 
They would take Fionn out, 
Or would have the house to themselves. 

"If Faolan and Goll lived, 

Diarmuid the brown haired and Oscar the noble; 
In any house that demon or God ever formed, 
Fionn and the Fenians could not be in bondage. 

"Were there a place, above or below. 
Better than Heaven; 
'Tis there Fionn would go. 
At the head of his Fianna." 

Sometimes his boasting and his perversity provoked to Ire the 
quick-tempered Patrick — 

"Misery attend thee, old man, 

Who speakest the words of madness; 
God is better for one hour, 
Than all the Fians of Eire." 



72 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

This would elicit retort in kind from Oisin — 

"O Patrick of the crooked crozier, 

Who make me that impertinent answer; 
Thy crozier would be in atoms, 
Were Oscar present. 

"Were my son Oscar and God 

Hand to hand on Cnoc-na-Fiann 

If I saw my son down, 

I would then say God was a stronger man." 

But the ardent Patrick would insist on impressing this old 
heathen that in power, might, and all good quahties, God was in- 
finitely beyond all mortals. This was very hard for Oisin to com- 
prehend or admit — 

"Hadst thou seen, O chaste cleric, 

The Fenians one day on yonder Southern strand ; 

Or at Naas of Leinster of the gentle streams, 

Then the Fenians thou wouldst greatly have esteemed. 

"Patrick, enquire of God, 

Whether he recollects when the Fenians were alive; 
Or hath he ?een East or West, 
Men their equal, in the time of fight. 

"Or, hath he seen in his own countr)', 
Though high it be above our heads; 
In conflict, in battle, or in might, 
A man who was equal to Fionn." 

Moreover, these old comrades of his, from whose example, 
and from the admiring of whom, Patrick strove to turn him — 
possessed those very virtues which, according to Patrick's preach- 
ing, should have won them Heaven — 

"We (the Fenians) never used to tell untruth, 
Falsehood was never attributed to us; 
By truth and the might of our hands, 
We came safe out of every conflict 

"There never sat a cleric in a church. 

Though melodiously ye think they chant psalms, 
More true to his word than the Fian, 
Men who never shrank from fierce conflicts. 



FIONN AND THE FIAN 73 

"A cleric never sat in a church, 

O Patrick mild of the sweet voice ! 

More hospitable than Fionn himself; 

A man vv^ho was not niggardly in bestowing gold. 

"Fionn never suffered in his day 

Any one to be in pain or difficulty; 
Without redeeming him, by silver or gold, 
By battle or fight, till he got the victory. 

"All that thou and thy clerics tell, 

According to the laws of Heaven's king; 

These (qualities) were possessed by the Fian of Fionn, 

And they are more powerful in God's kingdom. 

"Great would be the shame for God, 

Not to release Fionn, from the shackles of pain ; 
For if God himself were in bonds, 
The chief would fight on his behalf." 

But desire for Oisin's delightful tales of these brave Pagans 
would overcome in Patrick the zest for theological controversy — 

"Oisin, sweet to me is thy voice, 

And a blessing, furthermore, on the soul of Fionn ! 

Relate to us how many deer 

Were slain at Sliabh-nam-Ban-Fionn." 

And, Oisin, mollified, forgiving and forgetting Patrick's stric- 
tures on his Plan fellows, would forthwith launch into another of 
his rare tales, 



CHAPTER Xiy 

THE BREAK OF ULSTER 

Of the line of Ir, son of Milesius, to whom Ulster had been ap- 
portioned, that Branch called the Clan na Rory (after its great 
founder, Rory, who had been King of Ulster, and also High-King 
of Ireland) now had ruled the province for nearly 700 years, 
namely, for more than 300 years before the Christian Era, and 
more than 300 years after. And their capital city and the King's 
seat had been at Hmain Macha. During practically all of this 
time, from that fort's first founding by Queen Macha, the Royal 
Court of Ulster had been a court of splendour, and ever noted as a 
centre of chivalry and the home of poetry. 

And the power, and might, and courage of Ulster had ever 
acted as a brake on the ambitions of their neighbouring royal depre- 
dators, and especially the royal aggressors of Connaught, who 
were made to fear Ulster's name. 

But in the beginning of the fourth century, Ulster's power was 
irrevocably broken, and by far the greater portion of her territory 
wrested from her — her people driven into miserably narrow 
bounds from which, ever after, they can hardly be said to have 
emerged. 

It was when Muiredeach Tireach, grandson of Carbri of the 
Liffey, was High-King of Ireland, that Ulster was despoiled and 
broken by his nephews, the three Collas, who, on the ruins of the 
old kingdom of Uladh, founded a new kingdom — of Oirgialla 
(Oriel) — which was henceforth for nearly a thousand years to 
play an important part In the history of Northern Ireland. 

Muiredeach's father, Fiacha (son of Carbri), was reigning 
High-King at Tara in the beginning of the fourth century. Muire- 
deach, a young man of exceeding ability, was made King of Con- 
naught (for during some centuries now the Ard-RIghshIp was In 
possession of the Connaught royal family) and the throne oi Con- 
naught was usually the stepping-stone to the high throne at Tara. 
Yet because of the general Irish custom which alternated the head- 
ship of a kingdom or a chieftainry between two collateral branches 

74 



THE BREAK OF ULSTER 75 

of a paramount family, King Fiacha's nephew, Colla Uais (the No- 
ble), ambitioned the Ard-Righship in succession to Fiacha. 

Nov/, at a time when Muiredeach was in Munster, fighting his 
father's battles with great success and bright renown Colla Uais 
saw himself eclipsed, and popular feeling leaning to the victorious 
Muiredeach as the proper successor to his father, Fiacha. So 
Colla Uais, and his two brothers, Colla Da-Crioch and Colla Maen, 
gathered an army of their own adherents, formidably augmented 
it by seducing from their allegiance a large portion of Ard-Righ 
Fiacha's army, and giving battle to Fiacha, at Taillten in Meath, 
overthrew and slew him. 

They seized the throne for Colla Uais who reigned Ard-Righ 
for four years. At the end of that time he, in turn, was over- 
thrown by Muiredeach, and fled with his two brothers and their 
followers, to Alba, to the King of the Picts, who was his mother's 
father. 

Then Muiredeach became Ard-Righ of Ireland, and reigned 
for 27 years. 

But in the third year of Muiredeach's reign the three Collas 
returned. The story says, a Druid at the court of the king of the 
Picts divined that should they return to Ireland, and Muiredeach 
take the life of one of them, the Irish crown should fall to the sur- 
vivors. And on the Druid's disclosure, they, keenly covetous of 
the Ard-Righship, promptly acted. 

They sailed for Ireland, wenrto Tara, and into the presence of 
the King. Muiredeach was naturally surprised to find his father's 
slayers audaciously present themselves before him; but, being a 
man of superior qualities, he surprised them by his kindly greeting. 
Then he asked what news they brought. They, determined to 
provoke this good man, replied, tauntingly: "We killed your 
father." 

"That," said Muiredeach calmly, "is not news to me." 

"Then," they said, with bravado, "you want your revenge — 
and may have it." 

"Yes," said the great man, "I want my revenge — so, you are 
all three forgiven your crime." 

The three Collas were at first dumbfounded by a great-minded- 
ness incomprehensible to them. But they were not to be turned 
from their object. This dull man must be baited to vengeance. 
They said, "You take the way of a coward." 

And the great Muiredeach, far from resenting the insolent 
taunt again surprised and dumbfounded them by a noble, gentle 
reply — which completely won their hearts to him, and filched from 



76 THE S70RY OF THE IRISH RACE 

their minds the foul ambition. They thereupon professed their 
profound sorrow, and swore fealty to him. 

But the keen-minded Muiredeach knew that these bold youths 
were not meant to loll at court, and that if he did not find fitting 
trouble for them, they would, themselves, in all certainty find 
trouble which might be in no way welcome to him. So he directed 
them to face North and win swordland for themselves from the 
Ultach (Ulsterrnen) — on which direction they promptly acted. 

The ostensible cause of their attack upon Ulster was the an- 
cient grudge borne that province because many generations before, 
the Ulster king, Tiobraide, had sent to Tara fifty robbers disguised 
as women, who had slain Conn of the Hundred Battles — and be- 
cause, a generation later, the Ulster prince, Fergus Blacktooth, had, 
by setting fire to his hair at a feast, put a blemish upon Cormac 
MacArt, which, for a time, debarred him from the throne which 
Fergus then usurped. 

But the Collas first went to their kin in Connaught and there 
gathered a great army for the invasion of Ulster. On the plain 
of Farney in Monaghan they met the Ulstermen under their king, 
Fergus, and on seven successive days broke battle upon them, 
finally slaying Fergus and putting the Ultach to complete rout. 
Then they ravaged and destroyed famed and ancient Emain Macha, 
and drove the Ultach east of the Uri River and Loch Neagh — 
from the great expanse of their olden kingdom, hemming them 
into the straitened limits of the new kingdom, which comprised 
only parts of the present two counties of Antrim and Down. Of 
the conquered portion of Ulster, from Louth in the south to Derry 
in the north, and from Loch Neagh to Loch Erne, the Collas made 
themselves the new kingdom of Oirgialla (Oriel), which was pos- 
sessed, afterwards, by their descendants, the MacMahons, O'Han- 
lons, O'Carrolls, and MacGuires. 



CHAPTER XV 

NIALL OF THE NINE HOSTAGES 

NiALL of the Nine Hostages was the greatest king that Ireland 
knew between the time of Cormac MacArt and the coming of 
Patrick. His reign was epochal. He not only ruled Ireland greatly 
and strongly, but carried the name and the fame, and the power 
and the fear, of Ireland into all neighbouring nations. He was, 
moreover, founder of the longest, most important, and most power- 
ful Irish dynasty. Almost without interruption his descendants 
were Ard-Righs of Ireland for 600 years. Under him the spirit 
of pagan Ireland upleaped in its last great red flame of military 
glory, a flame that, in another generation, was to be superseded by 
a great white flame, far less fierce but far more powerful — and 
one which, unlike this one, was to shed its light far, far beyond 
the bounds of neighbouring nations — to the uttermost bounds of 
Europe. That is the great flame that Patrick was to kindle, and 
which was to expand and grow, ever mounting higher and spread- 
ing farther, year by year, for three hundred years. 

And Niall's career was full of drama — romantic and tragic. 

Niall was a grandson of Muiredeach Tireach. His father, 
Eochaid Muigh-medon, son of Muiredeach, became Ard-Righ mid- 
way of the fourth century. By his wife, Carthann, daughter of a 
British king, Eochaid had the son Niall. By another wife, Mong- 
Fionn, daughter of the King of Munster, Eochaid had four sons, 
'Brian, Fiachra, Ailill, and Fergus. Mong-Fionn was a bitter, 
jealous and ambitious woman, who set her heart upon having her 
son, Brian, succeed his father as Ard-Righ. As Niall was his 
father's favourite, Mong-Fionn did not rest until she had outcast 
him and his mother, Carthann, and made Carthann her menial, 
carr)'ing water to the court. The child was rescued by a great poet 
of that time, Torna,^ who reared and educated him. 

When he had reached budding manhood, Torna brought him 

^ Torna was also fosterer of Core, king of Cashel — one of the three Kin.o;s who 
is said to have been on the board witli St. Patrick, at the revision of the laws. 

77 



78 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

back to court to take his rightful place — much to his father's joy. 
Then Niall, showing strength of character, even in his early youth, 
took his mother from her menial task, and restored her to her 
place. 

Of Niall's youth there are many legends, but two in particular 
show the working of his destiny. 

One of these legends tells how, on a day, the five brothers being 
in the smith's forge when it took fire, they were commanded to 
run and save what they could. Their father, who was looking on 
(and who, say some, designedly caused the fire, to test his sons), 
observed with interest Niall's distinctiveness of character, his good 
sense and good judgment. While Brian saved the chariots from 
the fire, Ailill a shield and a sword, Fiachra the old forge trough, 
and Fergus only a bundle of firewood, Niall carried out the bel- 
lows, the sledges, the anvil, and anvil-block — saved the soul of the 
forge, and saved the smith from ruin. 

Then his father said: "It is Niall who should succeed me as 
Ard-Righ of Eirinn." 

The other legend tells how, on a day when the five brothers 
were hunting, and all of them sorely thirsted, they at length dis- 
covered a well, in the woods, which, however, was guarded by a 
withered and ugly, repulsive, old hag, who granted a drink only 
to such as should first kiss her. Thirsty as they were, neither one 
of Niall's four brothers could muster enough resolve to pay the 
price. But Niall unhesitatingly went forward and kissed the ugly 
old hag — from whom the rags immediately dropped, and the age 
and witheredness also, disclosing a radiantly beautiful maiden, who 
was in reality the symbol of sovereignty. Then, before Brian, 
Fiachra, Ailill, and Fergus were permitted to quench their raging 
thirst all four of them had to yield to Niall their chances for the 
kingship — and to swear loyalty to him. 

But Mong-Fionn schemed so well that, when Eochaid died at 
Tara, she had her brother, Crimthann, take the crown, to the ex- 
clusion of Niall — with the intention that Crimthann should wear 
it until her son, Brian, came of age. To her bitter wrath, how- 
ever, Crimthann, instead of acting as a roi faineaut, merely filling a 
gap, threw over Mong-Fionn's control, and made himself a real 
king, and a powerful, not only ruling Ireland but making suc- 
cessful expeditions abroad against the Picts in Alba, and against 
the Britons and Romans both in Britain and in Gaul, meeting great 
success, inspiring respect for his might, and from his foreign cam- 
paigns bringing back to Eirinn great booty. 



NIALL OF THE NINE HOSTAGES 79 

During his almost twenty years' reign the evil and designing, 
covetous Mong-Fionn never ceased planning for her son Brian's 
enthroning through the downfall of Crimthann. In her main ob- 
ject she failed. She, however, succeeded in kiUing Crimthann by 
poison, but at the cost of her own life; for, to induce him to be- 
lieve the poison cup harmless — she herself had to drink from it 
first. To attain her ambition she gave her life — in vain.^ 

Niall's first foreign expedition was to Alba, to subdue the Picts. 
The little Irish (Scotic) colony in that part of Alba just opposite 
to Antrim had gradually been growing in numbers, strength, and 
prestige — until they excited the jealousy and enmity of the Picts, 
who tried to crush them. Niall fitted out a large fleet and sailed 
to the assistance of his people. Joined then by the Irish in Alba, 
he marched against the Picts, overcame them, took hostages from 
them and had Argyle and Cantire settled upon the Albanach Irish. 

After obtaining obedience from the Picts, his next foreign raid 
was into Britain. When Maximus and his Roman legions were, 
in consequence of the barbarian pressure upon the Continental 
Roman Empire, withdrawing from Britain, Niall, with his Irish 
hosts and Pictish allies, treaded upon their hurrying heels. Yet 
did the Romans claim victory over Niall. For it is said his was 
the host referred to by the Roman poet, Claudian, when in prais- 
ing the Roman general, Stilicho, he says Britain was protected by 
this bold general. 

"When Scots came thundering from the Irish shores, 
And ocean trembled struck by hostile oars." 

Such rare booty was to be got from the retreating Romans that 
Niall who had had a fleet with him, and had it coast around Britain, 
crossed the English Channel, and pursued the Romans into Gaul. 
He had laid Britain helpless, and in the maritime parts of Armori- 
can Gaul must have worked wide devastation. 

Gildas, the ancient British (Welsh) historian, records three 
great devastations of Britain by the Scots (Irish) and Picts, of 
which this invasion led by Niall was probably the first. 

Niall must have made many incursions into Britain and prob- 
ably several into Gaul. He carried back hostages, many captives, 
and great booty from these expeditions. Yet how often out of 



2 Not only did the Ard-Rg-Jiship of Eirinn pass from Brian, but the kingship 
of Connaught, also. This " '' to Fiachra and his posterity, who, for 700 

years after, held it, to th-iter CenturiaHan and his posterity. The Ard-Righship 
fell to the more worthi^ fierce rivalry "^.the last quarter of the fourth century. 



8o THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

evil Cometh good. It was in one of these Gallic expeditions that 
the lad Succat, destined under his later name of Patrick to be the 
greatest and noblest figure Ireland ever knew, was taken in a sweep 
of captives, carried to Ireland and to Antrim,^ there to herd the 
swine of the chieftain, Milcho. Many and many a time, in Alba, 
in Britain, and in Gaul, must Niall have measured his leadership 
against the best leadership of Rome, and pitted the courage and 
wild daring of his Scotic hosts against the skill of the Imperial 
legions. Yet his fall in a foreign land was to be compassed, not 
by the strategy or might of the foreign enemy, but by the treachery 
of one of his own. 

He fell on the banks of the River Loire, in France, by the hand 
of Eochaid, the son of Enna Ceannselaigh, King of Leinster, who, 
from ambush, with an arrow, shot dead the great king. 

Eochaid, coming in the train of Gsbran, king of the Alban Dal- 
Riada, had probably come purposely to France for this chance. 
The old sore of the Boru Tribute imposed by the Ard-Righ of Tara 
upon the King of Leinster was, of course, aback of this tragedy. 
The e\ils begotten of that deep sore were the immediate cause. 
Enna Ceannselaigh, King of Leinster, had several times put defeat 
upon Ard-Righ Eochaid, the father of Niall. Niall himself, since 
he had become Ard-Righ, had had trouble with the Leinster royal 
family. And, once, this Eochaid, son of King Enna, taking advan- 
tage of Niall's absence on a British expedition, had actually at- 
tempted to seize Tara. On Niall's return he punished Leinster 
for the bold outrage, took Eochaid, and held him at Tara as a 
hostage. But Eochaid, in the course of time, escaped, and fled for 
his father's realm. On his way home, near the Liffey, he came to 
the residence of Laidcenn who was a poet at the court of Niall. 
Here he wreaked his ire upon the poet's son, killing him. For 
this unholy violation of the sanctity of a poet's house, even his 
royal father with all the forces of Leinster would not be able to 
save him from vengeance sure and swift — which must fall, if he 
remained in Ireland. Eochaid fled from Ireland, and sheltered 
him at the court of Gabran, king of the Scottish Dal Riada. 

The sorrowing poet-father took his own revenge upon Lein- 
ster. For a full year, it is said, he satirised that country, and its 
king and its people, till, in accordance with the ancient belief in 
the fearful power of a poet's satire **neither corn nor grass, nor 
other green things, grew there." 

When Niall was about to set out unnji his final expedition Into 
z Dooty. 

•'' Probus' life of Patrick sets him «' Troagh Patrick. 



NIALL OF THE NINE HOSTAGES 8i 

Britain and Gaul, he had sent command to Gabran to join him with 
his forces — which gave Eochaid the opportunity of dogging Niall's 
footsteps abroad, and taking his revenge. Eochaid hid himself in 
a grove on the banks of the Loire just opposite Niall's camp — and 
at favourable opportunity speeding an arrow to the great man's 
heart, ended a notable career. 

The victorious host of the Irish, nov/ a sorrowing multitude, 
had to turn their backs upon victory and Gaul, and bearing the 
body of their worshipped chief, return to their island, crying loud 
their lamentations instead of chanting long anticipated piEans of 

joy- 

The slain warrior was laid to rest at Ochain — -the honoured 
place, getting Its name, says an old historian, from the mighty sigh- 
ing and lamentations made by the men of Eirinn at the hiding in 
earth of their greatest and best. 

Niall's reign and life ended In the year 404 A. D. 

By two wives NIall Is said to have had fourteen sons — eight of 
whom founding families, and it may be said founding principal- 
ities and dynasties, lived to history. 

"He was a man," says Gratianus Lucius, "very valiant, most 
skilled in war. He overcame In several engagements the Albanians, 
PIcts and Gauls, and carried off great numbers of prisoners ar.d of 
cattle." 

Four of these sons, namely, Flacaid the ancestor of the Mac- 
Geoghegans and O'Molloys, Laegaire the ancestor of the O'Quin- 
lans, Conal CrimthannI ancestor of the O'Melaghlalns, and Mani 
ancestor of the MacCatharnys, settled in Meath and adjoining 
parts, and are since known to history as the Southern Ui Neill (or 
y Neill). His son, Conal Gulban — against the will and command 
of his father — led his brothers, Eogan, CarbrI, and Enna Fionn 
to found kingdoms in the northwest of the Island. The instiga- 
tion of Conal Gulban's disobedient march of conquest was the slay- 
ing of his tutor by the Connaughtmen. From Connaught he then 
conquered the northwest of the Island — the present counties of 
Donegal and Tyrone, and parts of Derry, Fermanagh, Leitrim, 
and Sligo. TIr Conal (Donegal) Conal Gulban reserved for him- 
self. TIr Eogan (Tyrone) became the domain of Eogan. The 
northeast of Sligo and North Leitrim went to CarbrI. And Enna 
Fionn was settled in the southern shoulder of TIr Conal. 

Eogan became ancestor of the royal house of O'Neill of Ty- 
rone, and Conal Gulban of the royal house of O'Donnell, of Done- 
gal. Although In later centuries the KInel Conal and the KInel 
Eogan developed a fierce rivalry, so great v/as the affection be- 



82 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

tween the brother founders of the two families that when Conal 
Gulban was killed in 464 by a clan of the Firbolgs, on the Plain 
of Magh Slecht, in the present county of Cavan, his brother, Eogan, 
within a year after, died of grief. 

As was mentioned before, even the kingship of Connaught did 
not fall to Niall's half-brother, Brian,* the favourite of Mong- 
Fionn. That overlordship went to Fiachra, and was continued to 
his posterity thenceforward to the 12th century. 

Now on the death of Niall, his brother Fiachra's son, Dathi, 
became Ard-Righ — and followed in Niall's footsteps, leading his 
armies abroad for foreign conquest, and for the bringing home of 
foreign spoils. He set out on his career of conquest at the age of 
seventeen — after a Druid at Tara had told him that he would be 
conqueror of Alba and impress his power on other foreign lands. 
He first brought Alba to submission — fighting and overcoming Fere- 
dach Finn, King of the Picts. (Conal Gulban, son of Niall, seized 
hold of that king and killed him against a pillar stone.) Then, 
as Niall had followed upon the heels of Maximus in his evacuation 
of Britain, Dathi followed up and hastened the later retreat of 
Constantine with his Roman legions from that kingdom. He fol- 
lowed them into Gaul — where he was killed by lightning. If it 
be true, as recorded by the ancient historian, that it was at the foot 
of the Alps he met his death, we must conclude that Dathi was 
both a bold and powerful prince.'' 

Dathi's body, too, was borne home over land and sea and was 
buried in the great cemetery of the Connaught kings, at Cruachan. 

From Niall's day onward to the iith century, this Dathi and 
his son, Ailill Molt, were the only Ard-Righs that Connaught gave 
to Tara and Ireland. All the other kings of Tara, for the space 
of 600 years, were of the family of Niall — usually taken alternately 
from the Northern Ui Neill and the Southern Ui Neill. 

The final cancelling of Connaught's claim to the throne of Tara 
came in the last quarter of the 5th century in about the 20th year 
of the reign of the aforesaid Ailill Molt — when Lugaid, the son 
of Laegaire and grandson of Niall, aided by Murchertach Mac- 

■* Brian is ancestor of the G>nnaught O'Conors, the O'Reillys, O'Rorkes, 
O'Flahertys, MacDcrmotts, and MacDonoughs. Fiachra is the ancestor of the 
O'Dowds, O'Kevans, O'Hynes, CXShaughnessys, O'Qerys. 

s The Abbe MacGeoghegan, chaplain to the Irish brigade in the service of 
France, and noted Irish historian, says that in his day there still existed in Pied- 
mont a tradition of the invading Irish king being there, and of his having spent 
a night at the castle of Sales — which latter fact, the Abbe says, was recorded in 
an ancient registry in the archives of the House of Sales. 



NIALL OF THE NINE HOSTAGES 83 

Erca of the Northern Ui Neill, and by the King of Ulad and the 
King of Leinster, completely overthrew Ailill Molt and the Con- 
naught forces, at the great battle of Ocha. And henceforth, for 
long centuries the paramount lords of the land were of the family 
of the great Niall of the Nine Hostages. 



CHAPTER XVI 

IRISH INVASIONS OF BRITAIN 

In Spite of their apparently Isolated position the Irish, from the 
earliest times, seem to have kept up a fair intercourse with for- 
eign countries — being Intimate with Alba (Scotland) and Britain, 
and somewhat less Intimate with France, and with other Conti- 
nental countries. The ancient traditions of all lands naturally re- 
flect the true manners and customs of those countries, and echo 
truly the old-time happenings. The ancient Irish tales bristle with 
references to the aforementioned Intercourse, and with evidence 
that foreigners of diverse races were frequently entertained in 
Irish courts, foreign mercenaries sometimes employed In Irish wars, 
and foreign matrimonial alliances occasionally contracted by Irish 
royal families. 

Labraid Loingseach In very distant, pre-Christian days, was 
said to have brought back from his exile in France two thousand 
Gallish soldiers, by whom he avenged his grandfather's murder, 
and put himself upon the throne. The very ancient poetical ac- 
count of the Battle of Ross-na-rl says that Conor MacNessa (who 
reigned in Ulster at the beginning of the Christian Era) sent an 
embassy to some foreign country, and that Cano, a foreigner, went 
as pilot, to teach them their way over the surface of the sea. The 
Tain tells us that Queen Maeve (Conor's contemporary) had a 
number of Gallish mercenaries In her army when she went against 
Ulster. 

British and Pictish visitors are frequent in the old tales — and 
even the Northmen — these latter almost always as enemies. Saxo 
Grammaticus says that the Northmen besieged Dublin — or some 
great fort that stood there — in the first century. CuchuUaln, in 
the old tale, is made to fight a Scandinavian, Swaran, the son of 
Starno. And the Pianna In the legends had many an encounter : 
with the Northmen. At the battle of Magh Mochrulme (In the 
final years of the second century), we are told that MacCon had 
in the army which he led against Art the Lonely many foreigners 
whom he had gathered with him on his travels — Franks, Saxons, 

84 



IRISH INVASIONS OF BRITAIN 85 

Britons, and Albans. That great old tale, the Bruidean da Dearga, 
shows Saxons at the court of Conari Mor (in the century before 
Christ). 

Although the Irish were not a sea-going people — in this respect 
bearing not the remotest comparison with the Northmen — and 
probably because, unlike the Northmen, their country was so rich 
and fruitful as not to make sea-going a necessity — yet they seem 
to have been moderately well equipped for sea-travel and moder- 
ately expert in the art. They certainly sailed as far as France, 
and several of the stories would indicate that they sailed to Spain. 
But this is highly doubtful. Yet the Book of Rights (said to have 
been first compiled in the early third century, under direction of 
Cormac MacArt) informs us that ten ships with beds was part of 
the yearly tribute paid from the king of Cashel to the Ard-Righ. 
Part of the Book of Acaill (also said to have been compiled by 
Cormac MacArt) contains Muir-Brethra, Sea-laws, and defines the 
rights and duties of foreign trading vessels. 

The Annals of Tighernach tell us that in the year 222 Cormac's 
fleet sailed over the sea for three years. We are told that Niall 
took his fleet with him when he invaded Britain; that he had it 
sail around the British Coast, and then convey his army to France. 
And Cormac's Glossary says that Breccan, grandson of Niall, had 
a trade fleet of 50 currachs sailing between Ireland and Scotland 
— which were swallowed up by the whirlpool off Rathlin Island — 
ever since called Coire-Breccain after him who met disaster there. 

There is a tale of how Conal Cearnach, once, at the instigation 
of Fraech, went over the sea eastward into Britain, over the Muir 
Nicht to the Continent, over Saxony to the North of Lombardy 
till he reached the Alps — to recover plunder.^ 

In Patrick's time we find the slave-boy, quitting his slavery, ar- 
rive at the sea just in time to catch a ship about to sail for foreign 
lands. And a little later still, when that troublesome Irish agitator 
and denouncer of royal vice, Columbanus, is ordered to be de- 
ported from France to his own country, they readily find a ship 
at Nantes, just about to sail for Ireland. These historic happen- 
ings imply that there must then have been fairly intimate inter- 
course between Ireland and other lands. 

Of course in the pre-Christian days practically all Irish foreign 
military expeditions were into Alba and Britain. 

The Romans, though they valued and held Britain a long time, 

^ It is scarcely necessary to repeat that the evidential points taken from tales are 
not set down as facts — but as the probable or possible eclioes of facts. 



86 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

and even penetrated deep into Alba, never once ventured Into Ire- 
land — though it is recorded that at one time they were collecting 
their forces in the Northeast of Britain, to attempt the Irish con- 
quest. And the Roman general, Agricola, who, in the year 80 
A. D. finished the conquest of Britain, evidently considered the con- 
quering of Ireland. His historian son-in-law, Tacitus, mentions 
how he frequently talked with Agricola on that subject; that Agric- 
ola had had an Irish prince (an exile, or a prisoner) from whose 
talk he concluded that the conquest of Ireland might be accom- 
plished by one Roman legion, and a small number of auxiliary 
troops. Undoubtedly he formed this conclusion from learning 
that Ireland (as an ancient Latin historian puts it) contained "six- 
teen different nations" — by which he meant different tribes. Hav- 
ing successfully won the rule of Britain, by assaulting separately 
the many tribes of that country, it was a natural conclusion that 
tribal Ireland should as easily fall into the Roman net. And his 
conjecture was probably correct. The want of a strong and per- 
manent autocratic central authority in Ireland, commanding the 
respect and obedience of the various sub-kingdoms and unifying 
Ireland's power, always left the nation open to the great danger 
of foreign conquest. Tacitus says that two tribes of the Britons 
could rarely be got together against the foreign foe. The self- 
same was always the weakness of Ireland and of all tribal nations. 
Yet the Romans never launched their attack against Ireland's 
Independence; though oftentimes they must have been sorely pro- 
voked so to do, because of the frequent harassing attacks of the 
Irish upon their territories in Britain. Their discovery of the 
fierceness of Irish fighters may have played a part in dissuading 
them from the Irish venture. The recklessness and persistency of 
Irish fighting taught them to respect Irish fighters, and Irish com- 
manders. Continental records show that the Romans recruited, 
anyhow one, and possibly many, Irish regiments, for Continental 
service. Latin inscriptions have been found on the Rhine front 
showing that the "Prlmi Scotti" (First Scots) regiments safe- 
guarded the Roman Empire there. The Emperor Diocletian ap- 
pointed as Commander in Gaul an Irishman of distinguished abil- 
ity. This was Carauslus, who had charge of the defence of the 
maritime parts. Eventually they broke with him — and broke him 
— because, they say, of his greed of gold. However, considering 
himself as good as his masters, he went into Britain, and set up 
opposition to them there. He assumed the kingship of the Britons, 
and as he was an able statesman as well as fine fighter, ruled Brit- 
ain well for the space of seven years. Carauslus was native of an 



IRISH INVASIONS OF BRITAIN 87 

Irish city which the Roman historian calls "Menapia* in Ireland." 
It was in the reign of Carbri Lifeachar over Ireland that this, his 
brother Irishman, was ruling over Britain. 

Of course various kings of Ireland were, at various times, styled 
kings of Britain also. And parts of Britain, if not all of it, paid 
tribute to these Irish overlords. Cormac's Glossary tells that the 
first lap-dog was brought into Ireland by Irish envoys who were 
collecting the Irish tribute from southwestern England. "For at 
that time," says the Glossary, "the sway of the Gaels was great 
over the Britons. They divided Alba between them, and each one 
knew the habitation of his friends." (Which is to say that the 
various resident Irish lords or deputies in Britain, were thickly 
located, in touch one with another.) "And," it continues, "the 
Gaels did not carry on less agriculture at the east of the seas, than 
at home in Scotia. And they erected habitations and regal forts 
there." 

Roman coins, some probably taken in tribute, some in war 
booty, and some in trade, have been found in various parts of Ire- 
land. Gold coins of the times of Theodosius and Valentinian, and 
copper coins of Nero, have been found in Meath, Antrim, and 
Derry, respectively. 

Though, because of the independent tribal system and conse- 
quent want of cohesion, the Irish nation was weak for defence, yet 
was it strong for offence — and could, and did, again and again, 
brave the best of the Roman legions. It was their wonderful dis- 
cipline and their weight of numbers that enabled the Romans to 
overcome the bold Irish attacks in Britain. And when at length 
Rome, threatened by the invading hordes nearer home, had to call 
back from her island outposts, legion after legion of her soldiers, 
and that her army in Britain was weakened, the Irish (Scots, as 
they were always called by the Roman historians) in alHance with 
the Picts, helped to push south the garrisons that were left and 
eventually to crowd them off the island. 

Britain was then left at the mercy of her northern and western 
neighbours, and as the British had grown effete under Roman occu- 
pation, and were no longer fighters, they suffered fearfully from 
these invasions. 

It was after the destruction of Emania (A. D. 331) that the 
Irish and Pictish invasions of Britain assumed their most serious 
phase. The Connaught royal house and Its kin was then securely 



2 Ptolemy, a couple of centuries earlier, also mentions this Irish city. It has 
not been identified by our historians. 



88 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

established over the greater part of Ireland — and probably be- 
cause of this easy security at home the Irish fighters had both time 
and inclination to look abroad for that excitement and adventure 
which was the breath of their nostrils. Soon, so successfully and 
so threateningly did they carry on their British operations that in 
343 the Emperor himself, Constantine, had to take personal charge 
of repelling them. 

Marcellinus records another invasion of the Picts and Scots in 
the year 360 — when they proved a terror to the Romans — and still 
another in 364, at the inconvenient time when Gaul was being 
ravaged by Continental enemies of the Empire — and yet again in 
368. He always refers to them as the Scots. (The country which 
we now call Scotland v/as then inhabited by the Picts in the North, 
and by the Caledonii in the South. The colony of Scots from Ire- 
land which later gave the country its name, was still an insignificant 
tribe clinging to the islands and headlands opposite Antrim.) 

Probably this latter invasion, as well as some subsequent ones, 
was conducted by the Ard-Righ Crimthann, uncle of Niall. Irish 
records say that Crimthann the Great reigned over Britain (mean- 
ing, of course, a chief part of Britain) for 13 years, from 366 to 
379. The Roman general, Theodosius, father of the Emperor of 
that name, led the Roman legions against this victorious Irish king, 
and finally drove him out. The Roman poet, Claudian, says: 
"And Theodosius, following the Scots through all windings, broke 
the waves of the Hyperborean Sea with his adventurous oars." 
From references in the writings of the Romans, it is evident that the 
Irish and the Picts had at various times made treaty with them. 
Ammianus Marcellinus, speaking of the invasion of 360, says that 
those nations "had broken the agreed peace in the British prov- 
inces." 

In 386 the invaders, successfully fighting their way, had al- 
most reached the gates of London. Theodosius overcame and 
drove them back. 

The British historian Gildas, records three great invasions of 
the allied fighters, the Picts and the Scots — in 396, 418 and 426. 
For their attacks had then grown fiercer — as the Roman garrison 
in Britain had been depleted for much needed service against the 
Continental invaders of the Empire. Each time the Britons had 
to beg their Roman conquerors to return and protect them. They 
sent embassies to Rome thus entreating. By command of the Ro- 
mans they made the great dike across their Northern boundary 
from sea to sea, to keep out the invaders. But the Romans were 
scarcely gone when the invaders came flying over the dike. And 



IRISH INVASIONS OF BRITAIN 89 

the Britons had once more to cry out for Roman protection. The 
next time that the Romans returned to free them from their op- 
pressors, they ordered the Britons to put up a defence of solid 
masonwork across their country. And in consequence was built 
the great Roman wall, 12 feet high and 8 feet thick — extending 
from sea to sea. 

But walls were useless against these persevering and indomitable 
invaders. The Britons tediously had to appeal to Rome again. 
In their appeal they said that their "barbarian" enemies drove 
them upon the sea, and the sea threw them back upon the bar- 
barians, so that they were either slaughtered or drowned. 

In the year 450 the Britons, to save themselves from their 
enemies, chose as their king a strong man, Vortigern, who, it is 
claimed by some, was Irish, his proper title being Mor-Tigeama 
(high-lord). 

Finally, to free themselves from the yoke of their neighbours, 
the British in 474 invited over Hengis and Horsa with their Saxon 
host. They readily came, cleared the country of the Picts and 
Scots, and then appropriated it for themselves. The poor harried 
Britons had exchanged one yoke for another. 

A long while after, the Irish were still dominating Wales. One 
particularly important Irish invasion of Wales, an account of which 
is contained in an ancient Welsh manuscript, was conducted by an 
Irish commander, whom they named Ganfael, which probably 
stands for Ceannfaelad — and who may have been Ceannfaelad, 
son to King Blathmac, mentioned by the Four Masters under date 
670. After this conquest of Wales, the Welsh account says that 
the Irish ruled there for 59 years. They were driven out bv Cas- 
wallawn. 

Sullivan, in his introduction to O'Curry, says that for a long 
time Wales was ruled by chiefs who were not only Irish but prob- 
ably owed allegiance to Irish kings. 

The Christian faith which the whole Irish people Imbibed so 
readily from Patrick during the fifth century caused a radical change 
in their character. After that century, there is not, with the ex- 
ception of the presumed Welsh conquest, any other recorded in- 
stances of military raids abroad. If we compare the history of 
Ireland in the 6th century, after Christianity was received, with 
that of the 4th century, before the coming of Christianity, the 
wonderful change and contrast is probably much more striking than 
any other such change in any other nation known to history. 



CHAPTER XVII 

GENERAL REVIEW OF PAGAN IRELAND 

Before quitting the story of the Race in its pagan days, let us see 
definitely just what stage of civilisation the Irish people had now 
reached. 

In the centuries before St. Patrick the keen and inquiring, in- 
tellectual, ones at the Irish courts must have had a fair general 
knowledge of what was transpiring in the intellectual and com- 
mercial world around the Mediterranean. And in turn that world 
must have had a general knowledge of Ireland and its circum- 
stances. Ptolemy's second century map of Ireland with its good, 
general outline of the shape and proportions of the Island, and of 
its coastline, and the generally correct details marked upon it, is a 
surprise to those who took it for granted that Hibernia or lerna 
was little more than a name to the learned of Greece and Rome in 
the first century of the Christian Era. The general correctness, 
for instance, with which Ptolemy traces the River Shannon, and 
other rivers and lakes, is significant — as well as his properly locat- 
ing such royal sites as Ailech, and Emain Macha. 

Marcianus Heracleota, in the third century, was acquainted 
with sixteen different Irish clans, and records that there were in 
Ireland eleven cities of note. These assemblages of habitations 
which he called cities were not of course those commerical centres 
which the Romans usually knew as cities. They were evidently 
the great assemblages of habitations that gathered around a royal 
court. When we note that Tara had twenty acres of raths, that 
these raths were covered with residences of the leading ones, and 
that we might naturally expect, in addition, other many hundreds 
of residences — habitations of the common people — upon the plain 
and around the foot of the hill, we may well understand the mean- 
ing of Marcianus' "eleven cities of note." (We may here add 
that the chief structures then were almost always built of wood 
— with some bronze — while the habitations of the general mass of 
the people were constructed of upright poles supporting walls of 
wicker work, or else were simple bothies.) 

90 



GENERAL REVIEW OF PAGAN IRELAND 91 

But in the first century of the Christian Era, Tacitus tells us 
that the Irish ports were well known to commerce and to mer- 
chants. The Phoenicians undoubtedly carried on a fair trade be- 
tween the Mediterranean and Ireland. The very fertile island, 
fruitful in soil, and not poor in minerals, had much to give to the 
Mediterranean traders, and much to get from them. When their 
ships sailed into the various Irish ports, we can readily see the 
Phoenician agents travelling thence, at head of bands of burdened 
slaves, white, and brown, and black, bent under the rich merchan- 
dise of Tyre and Sidon — penetrating the country, to the various 
inland royal courts, to the duns of the chiefs and brughaids, and 
to the many great fairs, for which Ireland was then distinguished. 
And we can see them returning, laden with the wealth of Ireland's 
woods and vales, and of her earth — pelts and metals and ores, and 
corn; rare products, too, of her weaver's shuttle; fancy ones of 
her women's needle; and delicate work of her craftsmen. Around 
the big blazing fire, at the Court, in the evening, we can hear these 
merchants, mellowed by Irish mead, enchanting the king, the king's 
scholars, his warriors and visitors, with account of the works and 
the wars, and the laws and the lore, the statesmen, the orators, the 
poets and historians, of their far fascinating world. And we can 
furthermore see occasional ambitious natives — with that roving 
disposition for which a few centuries later they became noted, if 
not notorious, on the Continent — some thirsting for knowledge, 
and some for adventure, returning with the merchants to their 
ships, and sailing away to the far lands that seemed haloed in 
glory. Most of these adventurers were eventually swallowed up 
in oblivion, so far as concerned the land and the kin that they left; 
though it is certain in later years there were not a few citizen orna- 
ments of the far-flung proud Roman Empire, who, if from them 
were torn the toga, would stand revealed exiles of Eirinn — such, 
for instance, as the great Latin poet Sedulius (Seadhal),the Chris- 
tian Virgil, and the noted Roman lawyer and famous heresiarch 
Celestlus (Cellach), of whom we shall treat in a future chapter. 

Undoubtedly Ireland was then rich in metals, and the hands 
of its unsurpassed craftsmen deftly wrought from them not only 
the utilitarian article, but also ornaments whose beauty astonishes 
connoisseurs to-day. From the common sickle of the far-away 
bronze age to the delicately beautiful spear of days only a little less 
ancient, and to the beautiful, spiral-decorated bronze ornaments — 
of all of which, rare specimens still exist — Ireland can show samples 
of pre-Christian metalwork which in perfectness are paralleled by 
the productions of few of the most ancient countries. 



92 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

The Ceird or metalworker, in ancient Ireland, was ever a 
highly-honoured craftsman, who, because of the beauty and excel- 
lence of his work, ranked among the nobles. And the soil of Ire- 
land is still wealthy with the buried evidences of his superb artistry. 

Here may be mentioned, too, the very ancient art of enamelling, 
in which the early Irish artists excelled. Philostrates, a Greek 
teacher in the Imperial Palace in Rome at the time of Septimus 
Severus (about 200 A. D.) is supposedly referring to the Irish, 
when he describes, as a new art to him, enamels which he examined 
on the horse trappings of "barbarians who live in the ocean." (To 
the egotistical Roman all who lived beyond Roman influence and 
did not adopt Roman culture, were "barbarians.") Very beautiful 
examples of this Irish enamel work can be seen on those two vener- 
able and beautiful treasures, the Ardach chalice, and the Cross of 
Cong. And though these articles are hoary with antiquity, the 
enamel craftsmanship shown on them, was in its turn hoary when 
they themselves were new, 

Ireland was rich in gold. It was the one country above all 
others in Western Europe that was distinguished for its gold 
wealth. Professor Mentelius says that the ancient gold of Scandi- 
navia came chiefly from Ireland "which during the bronze age was 
one of the lands in Europe richest in gold." ^ The ancient gold orna- 
ments preserved in the National Museum in Dublin weigh 570 
ounces; while in the British Museum the total gold ornament col- 
lection from England, Wales and Scotland combined, is only 50 
ounces. 

The ancient seanachies in the olden tales constantly convey to 
us an impressive sense of the la\ishness with which the precious 
metals were, in those times, used. In quoting from the tale of the 
Bruidean Da Dearga the poetic description of the maiden Edain, 
dressing at the fountain, O'Curry says that the old writer might 
well be charged with too extravagant fiction, if we did not still 
have, in proof of its accuracy, the combs, the gracefully carved 
caskets of gold, the clasps and the fastenings, and the gold balls 
in which the ends of the ladies' flowing locks were anciently in- 
serted. 

"There was of old an admirable illustrious ting over Eirinn, 
whose name was Eochaid Fedleach. He on one occasion passed over 
the fair-green of Bri Leith, where he saw a woman on the brink 
of a fountain, having a comb and a casket of silver, ornamented with 

1 In the year 1796 nuggets of native gold weighing 7 ounces, 9 ounces, 18 and 
22 ounces were picked up in a mountain stream that flows between Wicklow and 
Wexford. 



GENERAL REVIEW OF PAGAN IRELAND 93 

gold, washing her head in a silver basin with four birds of gold 
perched upon it, and little sparkling genis of crimson carbuncle upon 
the outer edges of the basin. A short, crimson cloak, with a beau- 
tiful glo^ lying near her; a brooch of silver, inlaid with sparkles 
of gold, in that cloaL A smock, long and warm, gathered and 
soft, of green silk, with a border of red gold, upon her. Won- 
derful clasps of gold and silver at her breast, and at her shoulder- 
blades, and at her shoulders in that smock, on all sides. The sun 
shone upon it, while the men (that is the king, and his retinue) were 
all shaded in red, from the reflection of the gold against the sun, 
from the green silk. Two golden-yellow tresses upon her head, each 
of them plaited with four locks or strands, and a ball of gold upon 
the point of each tress. The color of that hair was like the flowers 
of the bog fir in the summer, or like red gold immediately after re- 
ceiving its coloring. And there she was disentangling her hair, and 
her two arms out through the bosom of her smock." 

Silver and bronze ornament, also, were plentifully used then. 
The old story-teller is of course idealising some realities that must 
have been In themselves both rich and beautiful, when he gives a 
description of the dun, which Cormac MacArt entered in the Land 
of Promise. ''He saw there a very large house with Its rafters 
of bronze, and Its wattling of silver, and a thatch of the wings of 
white birds. And he saw too a sparkling well within the lis, and 
five streams issuing from It, and the hosts around drinking the 
waters of these streams." 

The reader will remember that at the Feis of Cruachan and 
of Emain Macha were held examinations ^or the various kinds of 
craftsmen. Sixty persons of each craft were selected at each feis, 
and assigned each to his own district. But even then, before he 
could practice In that district, the chosen craftsmen had to be finally 
examined and approved by the SaoI-re-CeIrd or master mechanic 
of his own craft, In that district. 

Speaking of two pieces of a Pagan Irish bronze ornament pre- 
served in the Petrie Museum, Miss Stokes says: "If they are not 
the finest pieces of casting ever seen, yet, as specimens of design 
and workmanship they are, perhaps, unsurpassed." And she 
quotes the authority Kemble, the author of "Horae Ferales," who 
says of them: "For beauty of design and execution, they may 
challenge comparison with any specimen of bronze work that It 
has ever been my fortune to see." Those few words from these 
two eminent authorities, more strikingly impress upon us the won-, 
derful advance of art In pre-Christian Ireland than could volumes 
written upon the subject 



94 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Evidence of beautiful Irish art, in days more ancient still, is 
found in the delicately ornamented burial urns of beautiful form, 
that have been dug up out of ancient raths, and taken out of the 
very ancient Irish sepulchres. Some of these urns are pottery, some 
are stone — evidencing the forwardness of the Irish mind in the 
remote and supposedly primitive Stone Age. Also, the great dome- 
roofed sepulchres of the royal cemeteries on the Boyne, wherein 
the beautiful urns containing the ashes of the dead were preserved, 
are admirable evidences of the singidar advancement of ancient 
Ireland among the countries of the West — as also are the much 
later, but still very ancient, pre-Christian, gigantic stone forts like 
those of Dun Aengus on the island of Aran, and Ailech in Inish- 
owen, with their great walls of marvellously fine construction. 

Apropos ^of modes of burial in pre-Christian days, of interest 
is Caoilte's description of one. In an ancient tale in the Book of 
the Dun Cow, this old Fenian warrior, returned to earth from his 
long sojourn in the enchanted palaces of the Tuatha De Danann, 
is called upon to settle a dispute about a happening which was now 
history, but which befell during his former days on earth — the 
death of 'King Eochaid Airgtech (who was slain in battle in An- 
trim, A. D. 280). Caoilte says: "There is a chest of stone about 
him there In the earth; there upon the chest are two bracelets of 
silver, and his bunne-do-ats (ancient ornaments) and his neck 
torque of silver. And by his tomb there is a stone pillar, and on 
the end of the pillar that is in the earth is an Ogham which says: 
'Here Eochaid Airgtech. Caoilte slew me in an encounter against 
Finn.' " 

It is generally assumed that, for making short, important rec- 
ords, the early Irish used the ogham style of writing, repre- 
sented by numbers of straight lines upon both sides of the edge- 
angle of a flag or tablet of wood. The ogham letters are named 
for trees. They follow in an order totally different from the order 
of the letters in all other alphabets. The Irish call this alphabet 
Beth-luis-nion — the three syllables of which word are the three first 
letters (b, 1, n) of that alphabet. Great numbers of ogham stones 
have been found in Ireland, and the form of the language used on 
them points to the conclusion that these stones are mainly from 
pre-Christian times. Though it is the opinion of some noted 
scholars that ogham was Introduced into Ireland at or Immediately 
after the coming of Christianity. Anyhow, the ogham writing 
continued to be used down to the sixth and even the seventh cen- 
tury. The Continental Celtologist Zeuss who was profoundly Im- 
pressed with the great antiquity of it, found ogham among the 



GENERAL REVIEW OF PAGAN IRELAND 95 

glosses on a copy of Priscian, which emanated from the Swiss-Irish 
school and monastery of St. Gall — glosses that were written by 
Irishmen in the 7th or 8th century. He concluded that the Irish 
in pagan days wrote only in ogham. 

Several leading scholars agree, however, that books were writ- 
ten in Ireland for a long time before the coming of Patrick. Says 
Dr. Todd: "That a pagan literature existed in Ireland before 
Patrick, and that some of it is preserved, is highly probable." He 
points out that some fragments found in the Brehon Laws show 
internal evidence of pagan origin, and of high antiquity. O'Curry 
says that St. Patrick found the country teeming with men distin- 
guished for their acquirements in the native language and litera- 
ture, if not in other languages; philosophers, Druids, poets, judges. 
"Even at that remote period," he says, "we were a nation not en- 
tirely without a native literature, and a national cultivation suffi- 
cient to sustain a system of society, and an internal political gov- 
ernment so enlightened that, as our history proves, Christianity 
did not teach us to subvert, but rather endeavored to unite with it; 
a system, moreover, which had sufficient vitality to remain in full 
force through all the vicissitudes of the country, even till many 
ages after the intrusion of the Anglo-Normans, in the twelfth cen- 
tury — who themselves indeed found it so just and comprehensive 
that they adopted it in preference to the laws of the countries from 
which they came." 

There is foreign evidence, too, of a pre-Christian Irish litera- 
ture. In the fourth century of the Christian Era there was pro- 
duced on the Continent a work, Cosmographia Aethici Istrii, com- 
piled by a Christian philosopher of that time, in which are recorded 
the observations of Aethicus of Istria on his travels in various 
countries. He tells of visiting Ireland and remaining there some 
time, examining the books of the Irish, about which he, in egotistical 
Latin way is scornful. From Orosius' history Joyce quotes the 
terse account of his visit to Ireland — "He hastened (from Spain) 
to Hibernia and remained there some time examining their volumes; 
and he called them {i. e., the Irish sages) ideomochos or ideo- 
histas, that is, unskilled toilers or uncultivated teachers." 

The hard-headed Scotch-Englishman, Fergusson, concludes that 
from the time of Cormac MacArt (middle of the third century) 
the Irish had books. In his View of the State of Ireland, Edmund 
Spenser (who so frequently derides the Irish people among whom 
he spent days both pleasant and profitable) says: "It is certain 
that Ireland hath had the use of letters very aunciently and long 
before England. Whence they had those letters it is hard to say 



96 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

. . . but that they had letters aunciently is nothing doubtful, for 
the Saxons of England are said to have their letters and learning, 
and learned them from the Irish, and that also appeareth by the 
likeness of the character, for the Saxon character is the same with 
the Irish." 

After the Seanchus Mor was compiled by a council of the 
learned ones under direction of St. Patrick — a collection of the 
old laws expurgated and Christianised — various accounts agree in 
stating that he committed to the flames a pile of old pagan volumes 
— some say up to two hundred. But it is probable that this con- 
clusion about Patrick burning the pagan books may, by the old au- 
thorities, have been arriv^ed at rather by inference than instance. 

In both the Book of Ballymote and the Book of Lecan there 
is an ancient Irish grammar, in four parts, in which the Gaelic 
language is elaborately compared with the Latin, and occasionally 
with the Greek and Hebrew. The first three parts of this grammar 
are attributed to pre-Christian Irish scholars, and only the fourth 
to an ante-Patrician scholar, the celebrated Ceann Faelad — a re- 
markable man in many ways. Some who believe that he is rightly 
credited with part four of the book, also think that he re\ised, or 
rewrote, or was himself the author of, the other three parts. 

There is an ancient metrical life of St. Patrick attributed to 
Fiacc — who, when Patrick came, had been a disciple and pupil of 
the court poet, Dubtach, and whom Patrick converted and chose 
as one of his disciples. It contains one hundred and thirty-six lines 
in the most ancient style, idiom, and rhythm of the Gaelic. The 
oldest existing copy is contained in a remarkable collection, that is 
more than a thousand years old, the Liber Hymnorum. Several 
noted antiquarians express their belief that this remarkable h)Tnn 
or poem is the genuine work of him to whom it was attributed. 
If the work be really Fiacc's, then, though it was written in Chris- 
tian days, it is obviously the fruit of pagan culture. 

The same, of course, is true of the Seanachus Mor, that won- 
derful code of laws compiled under Patrick. Sullivan, in his in- 
troduction to O'Curry, treating of the Brehon Laws, proves that 
the fundamental principles of them belong to very early pagan 
times — and says that the latest period at which those institutions 
could have attained their full development was in the seventh or 
eighth century. 

Among shining lights of pagan Ireland, Keating enumerates — 
a famous wise Brighitt of whom survives the phrase "Briathra 
Brighdi," the Sayings of Brighitt; Conla of the Mild Judgments, 



GENERAL REVIEW OF PAGAN IRELAND 97 

a Connaught sage; the two Senchans; Morann, the son of Maen; 
Fercertni, the poet; Neidi, the son of Adna; Athairni; Fergus, his 
son; Feradach the Just; Fithil the Sage; Fergus, the poet; Dub- 
thach O'Lugair; and Rossa, the son of Tirchin (the last three of 
whom laid the old laws before St. Patrick). And he points out on 
ancient authority, that in pagan times in Ireland so high was the 
ethical standard that no one could hold the rank of OUam ri-Sean- 
chus, or Doctor of History, who once falsified a fact, and that no 
one could hold the rank of Brehon, or Doctor of Law, who had 
once given a corrupt judgment. 

Finally, it is to be remembered that the late Professor Zimmer 
(of the University of Berlin) most eminent of recent Celtologists 
on the Continent, concludes that Irish schools had begun to be 
known on the Continent before the coming of Patrick — by the end 
of the fourth century. 

Altogether, the mass of evidence is strongly in favour of the 
supposition that Ireland was in the enjoyment of letters long be- 
fore the introduction of Christianity. 

While there is much evidence to show that the pagan Irish in- 
dulged in the sun worship which their ancestors brought with them 
from the East, there is also some little ancient evidence, including 
a sentence from the pen of St. Patrick himself, betraying that some 
idol worship must have been practised there, likewise. -Though 
it is quite possible that this idol worship may have pertained not 
to the Milesian but to one or other of the subject races on the 
Island. 

The idol, Crom Cruach, which stood on the plain of Magh 
SJecht (near Ballymagauran, in Cavan) before which the ancient 
Tighernmas and his host, long centuries before Christ, were 
stricken with sudden death, on the eve of Samain (Hallow Eve) 
was destroyed, it is said, by Patrick. The image or the pillar of 
Crom Cruach was said to be of gold and silver (probably covered 
with these metals) and around it were twelve other images or 
pillars of brass or bronze. 

Before St. Patrick's time O' Curry says the instruction of youth 
seems to have been in the hands of the Files (philosophers) and 
the Druids. The instruction was sometimes given indoors, but 
oftentimes in the open air. And frequently the teaching was car- 
ried on as the master and his pupils travelled from place to place 
over the country. 

The Druid is frequently mentioned in the old Irish tales and 
poems. The Irish word Draoi is used — which, by general accept- 



98 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

ance, is rendered Druid. However, there seems to have been very 
great ceremonial difference at least between the Druidism of Ire- 
land (if it was Druidism) and the Druidism of Wales and Gaul. I 
But to the Irish, as to the Continental Druid, fire and water were 
sacred elements. The holy wells of all Christian days, from Pat- I 
rick's time to the present, were still holy in pagan times. And 
the festive bon-fires still lighted on all hills of Ireland on Midsum- 
mer Night (which term we apply to the night of June 23rd) with 
torches from which, even in the present generation, the sacred circle 
of fire was drawn around the growing crop to insure both its pro- 
tection and its fruitfulness — and through the embers of which the 
cattle were, for their blessing, driven — these bon-fires are assuredly 
of pagan origin, marking a great sun feast, on that day on which 
the Sun-god was supposed to be longest above the horizon. The 
Irish name for May-day, Baltinne, meaning the fire of Bal, or the 
sun, commemorates another of the great sun festivals of our fore- 
fathers. And the title Bal given to the sun-god is the same title 
which the faraway ancestors of the Milesians knew and reverenced 
in the far Eastern land, before their chronicled wanderings began. 
Patrick had to preach against this sun worship — "All those who 
adore it," he says in his Confession, "shall in misery and wretched- 
ness be given unto punishment." 

That frequent and much reverenced character, the Draoi, is 
said, by some, including John D'Alton, to have been, not at all a 
Druid priest, but a wiseman and instructor. There were two of 
these, namely, Luchru and Lugad the Bald, who, at the court of 
King Laegaire, met, encountered, and tried to overthrow Patrick, 
when he first appeared there. Other two of them, Mai and Caplait, 
were at the royal palace of Cruachan, instructing the two beautiful 
daughters of the king, Eithne the Fair and Fedelm the Ruddy. 

Most famous of Irish Druids was Mogh Ruith, a great Mun- 
ster magician — of whom is the legend that after having exhausted 
all the secret knowledge of these islands, he went with his clever 
daughter, Tlachtga, to Italy, to Simon Magus, to assist him in his 
contention with the Apostles. With the aid of Simon Magus they 
constructed a dread, magical wheel, the Roth Ramach, Rolling 
Wheel — which rolled along the skies, blinded all who saw, and 
killed all who touched it. 

In these pre-Christian days the paradise of the Gael, to which 
went the good and the heroic, was beneath the hills, or far off under 
the sea. It is variously named — Magh Mell, the Plain of Pleas- 
ure : Tir-Tairnigri, the Land of Promise; I-Breasil, the Isle of the 
Blessed; or Tir na n-Og, the Land of Perpetual Youth — "^ land 



GENERAL REVIEW OF PAGAN IRELAND 99 

wherein there is not save truth, and where is neither age nor decay, 
sorrow nor gladness, nor envy nor jealousy, hatred nor haughti- 
ness." 

Midir, a chief immortal of the immortal Tuatha De Danann 
whose paradise was under the hill of Bri Leith, in Longford, very 
finely describes this paradise, in his poetic address to Queen Edain, 
when he surprised her, with her fifty beautiful maidens, bathing at 
Inver. 

"O Befind ! wilt thou come with me 
To a wonderful land that is mine, 
Where the hair is like the blossom of the golden sobarche. 
Where the tender body is as fair as snow. 

"There shall be neither grief nor care ; 

White are the teeth, black the eyebrows, 
Pleasant to the eye the number of our host; 
On every cheek is the hue of the foxglove. 

"Crimson of the plain is each brake, 

Delightful to the eye the blackbird's eggs; 
Though pleasant to behold are the plains of Inisfail, 

Rarely wouldst thou think of them after frequenting the Great 
Plain. 

"Though intoxicating thou deemest the ales of Inisfail, 
More intoxicating are the ales of the good land — 
The wonderful land — the land I speak of. 
Where youth never grows to old age. 

"Warm sweet streams traverse the land, 
The choicest of mead and wine ; 
Handsome people without blemish, 

Conception without sin, without stain. 

"We see every one on every side, 

And no one seeth us; 
The cloud of Adam's transgression 

Has caused this concealment of us from them. 

"O lady, if thou comest to my valiant people, 
A diadem of gold shall be on thy head ; 
Flesh of SMane, all fresh, banquets of new milk and ale, 
Shalt thou have with me there, O Befind !" - 

2 Translated by Dr. Joyce. 

Among modern poets who have described the enchanted land, one of the 
many beautiful descriptions is by Ethna Carbery in her "Four Winds of Eirinn"— 



loo THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Many of the noted heroes of old were borne away in the body 
to the pagan paradise. Oisin, it will be remembered, was taken 
there, and his comrade-in-arms, Caoilte: and Conla, the son of 
Conn, was by a fairy maiden carried there in a crystal boat. The 
famous Voyage of Bran, one of the finest of ancient Irish stories, 
gives an account of Bran's search, over the western wave, for that 
coveted land. He found the happy isles of paradise — and sailed 

I-BREASIL 

There is a way I am fain to go — 

To the mystical land where all are young, 
Where the silver branches have buds of snow, 

And every leaf is a singing tongue. 

It lies beyond the night and day, 

Over shadowy hill, and moorland wide, 
And whoso enters casts care away. 

And wistful longings unsatisfied. 

There are sweet white women, a radiant throng, 

Swaying like flowers in a scented wind ; 
But between us the veil of earth is strong, 

And my eyes to their luring eyes are bhnd. 

A blossom of fire is each beauteous bird, 

Scarlet and gold on melodious wings. 
And never so haunting a strain was heard 

From royal harp in tlie Hall of Kings. 

The sacred trees stand in rainbow dew, 

Apple and ash and the twisted thorn, 
Quicken and holly, and dusky yew. 

Ancient ere ever grey Time was born. 

The oak spreads mighty beneath the sun 
In a wonderful dazzle of moonlight green — 

Oh, would I might hasten from tasks undone, 
And journey whither no grief hath been! 

Were I past the mountains of opal flame, 

I would seek a couch of the kmg-fern brown, 

And when from its seed glad slumber came, 
A flock of rare dreams would flutter down. 

Bvit I move without in an endless fret, 

WTiile somewhere beyond earth's brink afar, 

Forgotten of men, in a rose-rim set, 
I-Breasil shines like a beckoning star. 

The Irish scholar O'Flaherty in 1684 in his "lar Connacht" tells: "There is 
now living Morrogh O'Ley, who imagines he was himself personally in 0*Brazil," — 
he went uiere from Aran — and came back to Galway 6 or 8 years later and began 
(as a result) to practise "both chirurgery and phisick, and so continues ever since 
to practise, tho' he never studied or practised either all his life time before, as all 
we that knew him since a boy can averr." Hardiman says the story now is that 
the Book of O'Brazil was given him there — but he was not to open it for seven 
years. 

O'Flaherty relates that about 20 years before he wrote, a boat out of the 
Owles, blown west by night, next day about noon spied land so near that they could 



GENERAL REVIEW OF PAGAN IRELAND loi 

among them for hundreds of years. At last venturing home to 
Kerry one of his company jumped on shore, and became a heap of 
dust. Laegaire of Connaught with fifty men reigns in Magh Mell 
— jointly with Fiachna who had gone before him. 

The voyage of St. Brendan, too, was in search of this Land of 
Promise. 

For that enchanted land did not fade away before the light of 
Christianity. Even to many of the spiritual-minded, present-day 
dwellers on the Western margin of Ireland, Tir n'an-Og or I-Brea- 
sil, exists under the sea, just at the horizon's rim. Some rarely 
blessed people still alive, have, on occasion, seen it on a beautiful 
summer's eve rise over the sea, in all its intoxicating, indescribable, 
beauty. And more than once have courageous fishermen tried to 
reclaim it for mortal man- — but ever in vain — and sometimes, also, 
with dire result to the adventurous one.^ 

see sheep grazing on shore — ^yet dared not touch shore, imagining it was O'Brazil. 
They were two days coming back toward home. 

In the early 17th century Leslie of Glasslough, Co. Monaghan (ancestor of the 
present Leslie family there) secured a grant of I-Breasil when it should be re- 
covered — such recovery or disenchantment being considered imminent then (as it 
was in every generation). Hardiman in his "Irish Minstrelsy" reprints a letter sent 
from W. Hamilton of Derry in 1674 to a friend in London advising him of the 
discovery, a few weeks before, and practical recovery, of I-Breasil, by the (Taptain 
of a Killybegs schooner. The curious account is given in most circumstantial de- 
tail — and Hamilton asks his friend to inform young Leslie of the good news, that 
he may claim the land under his father's patent. 

3 Sometimes the spiritual Celt even in those pagan times had a paradise here 
on earth. Such was the case in the reign of Geide Ollgotach, Geide of the great 
voice, so called, says the Book of Leinster, because of the peaceful, harmonious 
character of his reign, when the people heard each ori^er's words and voices, with 
the same delight as if they had been the strings of the melodious harp of Ben- 
Crotta. 



I02 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

SELECTION OF WORKS DEALING WITH THE VARIOUS 
PERIODS AND PHASES OF PAGAN IRELAND 

Carbery, Ethna: In the Celtic Past (Stories of Ancient Ireland). 

D'Alton, John: Prize Essay on Irish Hist. (Proc. R. I. A.). 

Henderson, Geo., M.A., Ph.D.: Fled Bricrend, the Feast of Briciu, Irish 

Text, Translation and Notes. 
Hull, Miss Eleanor: The Cuchullin Saga in Irish Literature. 
Hyde, Douglas, LL.D. : A Literary History of Ireland, from the Earliest 

Times to the Present Day. 
Jones, the Rev. Wm, Basil, M.A. : Vestiges of the Gael in Gw>'nedd 

(North Wales). 
Joyce, P. W. : Social History of Ancient Ireland. 
Jubainville, H. DArbois de: Le Cycle Mythologique Irlandais et la My- 

thologie Celtique. Cours de Litterature Celtique. 
Keating's History of Ireland (Translated by Jno. O'Mahony). 
Meyer, Kuno: The Courtship of Emer, Translation (without Text) 

Archaeol. Rev., 1888. 
MacGeoghegan Abbe: History of Ireland. 
MacNeill, Eoin: Some Phases of Irish History. 
Nutt, Alfred: The Voyage of Bran: Essays on the Irish "Other World" 

or Pagan Heaven and on the Celtic Doctrine of Re-birth. 

Ossian and the Ossianic Literature. 

Cuchulainn, the Irish Achilles. 

O'Curry, Eugene: Manuscript Materials of Irish History'. 

Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish. 

O'Donovan, Jno., LL.D.: Annals of the Four Masters (Translation and 

Notes). 
O'Halloran's Histon,' of Ireland. 
Ossianic Society: Transactions of. 

Petrie, Geo.: On the History and Antiquities of Tara Hill. 
Rhys, Jno., MA., D.Litt. : Early Irish Conquests of Wales and Dumnonia: 

in Proc. Roy. Soc. Antiq.. Ireland, 1890-91. 
Stokes, Wliitlev, D.C.L., LL.D.: Bruden Da Derga: the Destruction of 

Da Derga's Hostel; Rev. Celt. XXII. 
Sullivan, W. K., Ph.D.: Introduction to O'Curry 's Manners and Customs 

of the Ancient Irish. 

Tain bo Chuailnge (The Tain). 

Wakeman, Wm. F. : Handbook of Irish Antiquities: Pagan and Christian. 
Wilde, Sir Wm., M.D. : Catalogue of Irish Antiquities. 

The Bovne and Blaclavater. 

Wood-Martin. Col. W. G.: Pagan Ireland. 

Traces of the Elder Faiths of Ireland, 1902. 

Rude Stone Monuments. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

IRISH CHRISTIANITY BEFORE ST. PATRICK 

While St. Patrick was unquestionably the evangeliser of Ireland, 
there is now hardly a doubt remaining in the minds of the scholars 
that Christianity had foothold on the Island before he came — and 
long before, think some. 

In A. D. 431, a year before the coming of Patrick on his Chris- 
tian mission, Palladius (who, by one authority, John Sichard, is 
even said to have been himself an Irishman) was sent by the Pope 
"ad Scotos in Christum credente" — to the Irish believing in Christ 
— which words clearly show Rome to have been impressed with 
the fact that the Irish Christians then were of some numerical im- 
portance. 

"It is universally admitted," says George Stokes, "that there 
were Christian congregations in Ireland before Palladius came." 

It is an interesting curiosity to find told among the ancients — 
as recorded by Eusebius and Nicephorus — that some of the apostles 
visited the Western Islands. Julian of Toledo says that James 
addressed a canonical letter from Ireland to the Jews in Spain. 
And Vincentius of Bauvais says that James, the son of Zebedee, 
preached in Ireland and that when he returned to Jerusalem — 
where he was martyred — he took with him seven Irish disciples. 

Usher quotes Nicephorus' Ecclesiastical History as saying that 
Simon Zelotus brought the Gospel to these islands, and was cruci- 
fied in Britain. 

St. Paul is also mentioned as having been in these Western 
lands. 

Reference has been made to the tradition of Conal Cearnach's 
visit to Jerusalem. Richardson (Prael. Ecc. History) says he 
brought back the faith to Conor MacNessa, and others of the 
Ultach, and that several Irish went to Jerusalem to be baptised. 

While the foregoing are set down as interesting curiosities, it 
is still an easy matter to conclude, as a result of the frequent inter- 
course between Ireland and the Romanised possessions of both 
Britain and Gaul, and of the interchange of war captives and 

103 



I04 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

refugees likewise, and the coming and going of travellers, that the 
doctrines of Christianity, which in the early centuries were promul- 
gated with such ardour and spread to the earth's ends with such 
amazing rapidity, must have been conveyed to Ireland from many 
sources, and through many channels — and that these new strange 
doctrines must have been many times examined and frequently de- 
bated by the scholars at the Irish courts, ever eager to discuss the 
doings of the outside world. 

Although Christianity did not obtain a hold upon the minds of 
the mass of the British people until Augustine, to some extent, and 
the Irish missionaries, in the main, carried the doctrines of Christ 
to them, it is known that there was Christianity in Britain in the 
latter half of the first century of the Christian Era — obviously con- 
veyed there by ardent Continental Christians in the Roman legions. 
And at the Council of Aries (in the year 314) a few British bishops 
were in attendance. 

Bollandus says that Palladius probably found in Ireland more 
Christians than he made. And that some Irish Christians figured 
prominently on the Continent of Europe in the pre-Patrician days 
is fairly well established by Continental records. "It is evident," 
says Dr. Todd, "there were Irish Christians on the Continent of 
Europe before the mission of St. Patrick, some of whom had at- 
tained to considerable literary and ecclesiastical eminence." He 
refers to, among others, Mansuy or Mansuetus of Toul, and says 
that in all probability he was an Irishman, distinguished as an emi- 
nent Christian missionary about a century before Patrick. Man- 
suy was sent from Rome to be first Bishop of Toul (in Lorraine). 
His tenth century metrical biographer, the abbot Adso, shows that 
Mansuy's Irish nativity was then taken for granted: 

"Insula Christicolas gestabat Hibemia gentes, 
Unde genus, traxil, et satus inde fuit." 

(Hibernia's soil was rich in Christian grace; 

There Mansuy saw the light, there lived his noble race.) 

Near Toul more than half a century before Patrick's day, in 
the time of the apostate Julian, and, say some, in the presence of 
Julian, was mart}Ted St. Eliphius, with his brother, Eucharius, and 
their sisters — who, says Peter Merss, were Hibernians of royal 
blood. Rupert of Luitz, in his "Life of St. Eliph," says, too, that 
he was son of the King of Scotia (Hibernia). Mt, St. Eliph where 
he is buried still commemorates him. St. Eliph did great mission- 
ary work in the city of Toul, suffered imprisonment, and after- 
wards converted four hundred people. 



IRISH CHRISTIANITY BEFORE ST. PATRICK 105 

Usher states that St. Florentinus who was imprisoned by Clau- 
dius, and converted aqd baptised ninety-six men and women fellow 
prisoners as well as his jailer, Asterius, "was a glorious confessor 
of Christ, born in Ireland." It is by no means certain, however, 
that Florentinus flourished before Patrick. 

The poet, St. Sedulius (in the Irish, Siadal), is asserted to be 
Irish by many authorities, from Trithemius who called him "Scotus 
Hybernienses," down to present day scholars. Dr. Sigerson says 
it was this poet and Irishman who first introduced into Latin poetry 
the Irish rhyme and assonance, which, at that time, were cultivated 
only in Ireland. His most noted work, "Carmen Paschale," earned 
for him the title of the Christian Virgil. Sedulius travelled much 
in Southern Europe and in Asia. He dedicated a work to the Em- 
peror Theodosius. 

By far the most brilliant Continental celebrity claimed for Ire- 
land before the days of St. Patrick, is undoubtedly Celestius, the 
disciple of Pelagius, who drew world-wide attention to himself in 
the very first years of the fifth century. This noted man's nation- 
ality is disputed, but amongst those who have gone into the subject 
there is fair consensus of opinion that he was at least Irish in blood 
if not also Irish by birth — either Irish of Ireland, or Irish of the 
Irish colony in Scotland. For those who would deny his Scotic 
(Irish) origin there is no way of getting around the allusions in 
St. Jerome's abuse of him, where once he calls him a "stupid fel- 
low, loaded with the porridge of the Scots," and again, "a huge 
and corpulent Alban dog who can do more with his claws than 
with his teeth, for he is by descent of the Scotic nation." He was a 
well-known lawyer in Rome about the year 400 when he began 
espousing the heretical doctrines of Pelagius, so warmly, persist- 
ently and aggressively, that he overshadowed his master. Those 
who would argue that he is not Irish have to admit that he showed 
the eloquence, persuasiveness, aggressiveness of a true Irish- 
man. He went to Carthage to preach against St. Augustine. He 
spoke before the Patriarch in Constantinople and before the Pope 
in Rome. Both by Imperial and Ecclesiastical decree he was ex- 
pelled again and again from both Rome and Constantinople. But 
this only increased his vigour, his ardour, and his militancy. He is 
said to have won over to his side Pope Zosimus in 416 — whom it 
took all the powers of Augustine and Jerome to win back again. 
This man who would not be downed, turned up at the Council of 
Ephesus in 431, espousing, against the Pope, the cause of the 
patriarch, Nestorius, in the great Nestorian controversy. He was 
excommunicated by the Ephesian Council. He had been condemned 



io6 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

by the Senate of Carthage twenty years earher — but that had not 
dampened his ardour or dulled the edge of his word. 

There is mention made by Gennadius of three epistles said to 
have been written by this fighter, "to his parents in Ireland" — 
before he espoused the cause of Pelagius. 

It is Dr. Douglas Hyde's conclusion that the Scot whom St. 
Jerome abuses is not Celestius, but his heresiarch master, Pelagius. 
He says: "Pelagius was an Irishman, descended from an Irish 
colony in Britain." 

Lanigan concludes that Celestius "of Pelagius, the most able 
favourite," surely seems Irish. Usher, O'Connor, Pctrie and 
Stokes hold the same opinion. And Dr. Todd sums up his conclu- 
sion in the following words: "Be this as it may, it must suffice to 
observe that St. Jerome manifestly speaks of an Irishman who was 
a professor of Christianity, engaged in the controversies of that 
day. This is unquestionable evidence that there was at least one 
Irishman on the Continent of Europe at that early period who 
was a Christian." 

Pelagius was the genius, and Celestius the brilliant talent, of 
the great Pelagian controversy. 

The brothers Moroni, who wrote the life of the Irish evan- 
geliser, and patron saint, of their city Tarentum, St. Cataldo (Irish, 
Cathal), say that he came there in the second century — but other 
evidence, which we may treat of later, would show that he was 
ante-Patrician. 

So much for the claims of Continental Irish Christians before 
St. Patrick. Now to return to the claims made for Irish Chris- 
tians living in Ireland. Many of the old Irish authorities, and 
indeed a few of the modern, urging that Christianity had not a 
disputed, but firm, foothold in some parts of the South, say that 
four of the well-known Irish saints flourished and preached to na- 
tive congregations before Patrick began his mission — Saints Ailbe 
of Emly, Declan of Ardmore, Ibar of Beg Eri, and Ciaran of 
Saighir. Colgan indeed says that not only were these four pre- 
Patrician, but eight or nine other old Irish saints, also. 

It is Hyde's opinion that the pre-Patrician claims made for 
Declan and Ailbe are substantiated. "We have it from the most 
ancient Acts of our Saints," says Colgan, "written one thousand 
years ago and up, that there were in Ireland not only many be- 
lievers of Christ, but also many distinguished for sanctity, before 
Patrick and Palladius came." There is a tradition of Ailbe that in 
the beginning of the fifth century, returning with fifty companions 



IRISH CHRISTIANITY BEFORE ST. PATRICK 107 

trom Rome, he preached to the Gentiles and baptised many and 
built a monastery for them. 

This is what an ancient Life of St. Declan says upon the sub- 
ject of the four bishops, his alleged forerunners, making their 
submission to Patrick : 

"The four Bishops aforesaid, who were in Ireland before St, 
Patrick, having been sent from Rome, as he also was, namely, Aiibe, 
Declan, Ciaran and Ibar, were not of the same mind as St. Patrick, 
but differed with him ; nevertheless, in the end thej' came to an agree- 
ment with him. Ciaran, indeed yielded all subjection, and concord, 
and supremacy to Patrick, both when he was present and absent. 
But Ailbe, seeing that the great men of Ireland were running after 
Patrick, came to St. Patrick in the city of Cashel, and there, with 
all humility, accepted him as his master in presence of King Aongus; 
this, however, had not been his original intention. For those Bishops 
had previously constituted Ailbe their master, and therefore he came 
to St. Patrick before them, lest they, on his account, should resist 
Patrick. But Ibar, by no argument could be induced to agree with 
St. Patrick or to be subject to him. For he was unwilling to re- 
ceive a patron of Ireland from a foreign nation; and Patrick was 
by birth a Briton, although nurtured in Ireland, having been taken 
a captive in his boyhood. And Ibar and Patrick had at first great 
conflicts together, but afterwards, at the persuasion of an angel, they 
made peace, and concord, and fraternity together. Declan, indeed, 
was unwilling to resist St. Patrick because he had before made fra- 
ternity with him in Italy: but neither did he think of becoming his 
subject, inasmuch as he also had the apostolic dignity: but having 
been at length admonished by an angel, he came to Patrick to do 
his will." 



Talking of the claims made for St. Ciaran of Saighir, MacNeill 
urges that southwest Cork, being, as shown by historical incidents, 
in touch with foreign lands, might well have got Christianity be- 
fore Patrick came. 

Usher agrees with Colgan regarding the four first mentioned. 
But such keen thinkers as Lanigan and Todd decisively deny their 
pre-Patrician claims — and by some it is alleged that these claims 
made for the four southern saints were cunning inventions of the 
nth and 12th centuries, when there was being waged a struggle 
for the spiritual supremacy of the Munster See of Cashel over the 
old Primatial See of Armagh. 

Archbishop Healy thinks that Ibar was probably pre-Patrician. 
He, anyhow, became a disciple of Patrick. He retired to the 



io8 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Island of Beg-Eri/ in Wexford Harbor, about fifteen years before 
the fifth century's end, and died in the last year of the century. 

The dates of the deaths of these men, as recorded in the An- 
nals, and pretty generally agreed upon, tend to prove that they 
could not possibly have been pre-Patrician, unless we suppose them 
to have far outstayed the ordinary span — for all of them lived into 
the sixth century, with the exception of St. Ibar who, as mentioned, 
died on the threshold of that century. 

At all events it is a safe conclusion that there were groups of 
Christians in Ireland when Palladius, preceding St. Patrick, came. 

Palladius landed in the southeast of the Island. He stayed 
only a short time, yet — and this is additional evidence of his having 
found Christians there — he had erected three churches before he 
left. He departed in the same year — some say driven out by a 
Leinster chieftain, Nathi — and went to Alba, where he died. It 
was on the news reaching Rome of his departure from Ireland and 
his death that permission was given to Patrick to follow his heart's 
desire, and, answering the cries which he had heard in his dream 
from the children of Focluit Wood, go to the evangelising of the 
people whom he loved. 

Lannigan, Rev. John, D.D. : Ecclesiastical History of Ireland. 

Hyde, Douglas, LL.D. : A Literaiy' History of Ireland. 

Stokes, the Rev. Dr. Geo. T. : Ireland and the Celtic Church. 

MacGeoghcgan, Abbe: History of Ireland. 

Keating's History of Ireland. 

Healy, the Most Rev. Jno. : Ireland's Ancient Schools and Scholars. 

St. Patrick. 

1 Says the tradition, when Patrick threatened Ibar that if he did not make sub- 
mission, he would not suffer him to remain in Eire, Ibar answered. "If I will not 
be in Eire, it will be Eire where I am" — hence "Beg-Eri" (little Ireland). 



CHAPTER XIX 

ST. PATRICK 

The coming of Patrick to Ireland marks the greatest of Irish 
epochs. 

Of all most momentous happenings in Irish history, this seem- 
ingly simple one had the most extraordinary, most far-reaching 
effect. It changed the face of the nation, and utterly changed the 
nation's destiny. The coming of Patrick may be said to have had 
sublime effect not on Ireland alone, but upon the world. It was a 
world event. 

The man himself proved to be a world figure — one of the mas- 
sive giants who tower distinct and sublime above the dense mists 
of dim antiquity— one, too, of whom it may truly be said that the 
more intimately you approach him and the nearer you view him, 
the greater he grows. He was one of the greatest of Celts, be- 
came one of the greatest of Irishmen, and one of the very great 
among men. 

Patrick first came to Ireland — as a captive — in the year 389, In 
the reign of NIall. It was forty-three years later, in the year 432, 
the reign of Laoghaire, that he came upon the mission which was 
so miraculously to change the Island's destiny. An ancient Pagan 
prophecy attributed to Conn of the Hundred Battles says: "With 
Laoghaire the Valiant will the land be humbled by the coming of 
the Tallcenn (I.e., Patrick) : houses across (i.e., churches) : bent 
staffs which shall pluck the flowers from their high places." 

In the period of Patrick's coming the great Roman Empire 
was crumbling, while Ireland, with fleets on the sea and armies in 
foreign lands, had reached the pinnacle of her political power — a 
time that would seem the least propitious for winning men to the 
meek and abnegatory doctrines of Christ. Yet was it, in His own 
mysterious way, God's chosen time for sending His chosen man. 

There is endless dispute as to where exactly was the birthplace 
of Patrick, which, in his Confession he appears to tell us was in 
"Bannaven of Taberniae."^ Many authorities hold that it was 

^ Though strictly speaking the only assurance to be found in that sentence of 
the Confession is that he was there taken captive. 

109 



no THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

near Dumbarton, in the most Northern Roman province of Celtic ' 
Britain. Others hold that it was in the Celtic province of Brittany 
in France. In his Confession are pieces of internal evidence that | 
sustain either theory. The fact that St. Martin of Tours was his 
maternal uncle is one of the strong points in favour of his Conti- 
nental origin. His father, Calporn held municipal office in the 
Romanised town (of Britain or Brittany) which was his native 
place — was a Decurion, a kind of magistrate, there. His mother, 
Conchessa, was niece of St. Martin. He himself was christened 
Succat, signifying "clever in war." 

Wherever he was born it seems to have been from Brittany, 
from the home of his mother's parents, where he was visiting, that i 
at the age of sixteen he was taken captive, with his two sisters, 
Darerca and Lupida. It was in a raid made by the men who sailed 
on a fleet of King Niall, says Keating. They were borne to Ire- , 
land, and his sisters said to have been placed in Muirthemne 
(Louth) while he was sold to an Antrim chieftain named Miliue, 
who set him herding his flocks in the valley of the Braid, around 
the foot of the mountain, Sliab Mis.- 

His occupation as a herd upon a mountainside was fine proba- 
tion for the holy career that was to be Patrick's. He confesses 
in his biography that in his wayward youth at home he had for- 
gotten God, and from Him wandered into the ways of sin. Alone 
with his herd upon Sliab Mis during the day and the night, the 
months and the seasons, his spirituality was reawakened. And 
God guided his feet to the path of duty again. "I was always 
careful," he says, in the affecting picture which he paints of the 
herdboy's wonderful days on the mountains, "to lead my flocks to 
pasture, and to pray fervently. The love and fear of God 
more and more inflamed my heart; my faith enlarged, my spirit 
augmented, so that I said a hundred prayers by day and almost 
as many by night. I arose before day in the snow, in the frost, and 
the rain, yet I received no harm, nor was I affected with slothful- 
ness. For then the spirit of God was warm within me." 

And thus did he spend seven years in human slavery, working 
out, with God, his spiritual freedom. And his human freedom fol- 
lowed. In a dream that came to him he was told to travel to the 
seashore at a certain place two hundred miles distant, where he 
should find a ship on which he would make his escape. He found 

2 One of his biographers, Probus, says that it was into the country of Tirawley, 
in Mayo, that Patrick was sold — and on the mountain of Croagh Patrick herded his 
flocks. There is grave doubt as to whether Darerca and Lupida were sisters 
(other than sisters in religion) of his. 



ST. PATRICK III 

the ship and was taken on board — after first getting a refusal and 
being turned away by the captain — and in the seventh year of his 
captivity he sailed away from Ireland. 

And be it noted that the Irish land which he had entered as a 
foreigner, he now left as an Irishman. For, as he was destined 
to give a new faith and new soul to Ireland, Ireland had given a 
new faith and new soul to him. He had found himself and found 
God in that land to which he was destined to bring God. In his 
seven years' slavery the Irish tongue had become his tongue, and 
his spirit was the Irish spirit, which at that impressionable age he 
had imbibed. So, to make him truly one of the people to whom 
he was to carry God's word, God had wisely ordained his slave 
service among them during the very six or seven years in which 
men's characters are stamped with the qualities of those amongst 
whom they move. For it is not where a man is born, or spends 
the careless years of childhood, but where and among whom he 
spends the plastic and absorbent years of youth, that determines 
his true nationality. So the Irishman, Patrick, now sailed away 
from his own land, whereto had arrived, several years before, an 
ahen Patrick. 

A three days' voyage brought him to the land from which he 
had been carried captive — after which a distressing journey of 
twenty-eight days through deserts and wilds brought him to his 
home, where the lost one was welcomed with great rejoicing. 

Yet, though his people resolved never to let him from their 
sight again, and though it gladdened him to be with his kin, his 
heart could find no peace for thinking of the country and the people 
that had grown into his soul, and had become his. There were 
centred the thoughts of the day, the dreams of the night. 

Till at length he had a vivid night vision, in which there came 
to him a man, Victor, from Ireland, bearing letters which were 
marked, "Vox Hibernionacum" — which, however, he could not read 
understandingly, for keen pathetic cries filled his ears, from the 
people of Focluit Wood beseeching him to come to them. "And 
there I saw a vision during the night, a man coming from the west; 
his name was Victoricus, and had with him many letters; he gave 
me one to read, and in the beginning of it was a voice from Ire- 
land. I then thought it to be the voice of the inhabitants of Focluit 
Wood, adjoining the western sea ; they appeared to cry out in one 
voice, saying, 'Come to us, O holy youth, and walk among us.' 
With this I was feelingly touched, and could read no longer: I 
then awoke." 

After this he could not rest inactive. He must prepare him- 



112 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

self for the task of carrying the Gospel of Christ to the people 
of his heart. And despite the tears and entreaties of his own rela- 
tives, he bade good-bye to them and home, and travelled away to 
study for the ministry.^ 

But, finally, having been consecrated Bishop, Pope Celestlne 
commissioned him to carry the gospel to the land of his love — and 
conferred on him the Roman noble name Patricius. 

He reached Ireland in 432 in the fourth year of the reign of 
Laoghaire, son of Niall, High-King.* 

3 A tantalising vagueness settles over the history of his Continental travels in 
search of learning and ordination. And very many conflicting accounts of his 
travels and studies are given. In 396, he is said to have entered the monastery of 
Marmoutiers, near Tours, a foundation of his uncle, St. Martin. Here he remained 
till Martin's death, which occurred, some say in 397, some in 402. And here had 
St. Martin given him the monastic habit and the clerical tonsure. 

Some (doubtful) accounts show him studying next (in 403) with the students 
of St. John of Lateran in Rome.-VHe visited and sojourned in many holy places 
and studied under many holy men — in monasteries and in hermitages, in Italy and 
in Mediterranean islands. He is said to have spent many years in a monastery on 
the Isle of Lerins, under St. Honoratus and St. Maximus. Afterward, many years 
seem to have been spent at Auxerre under St. Germanus, the Bishop, a man of 
great culture as well as piety. 

In the year 430 St. Patrick turned up at Auxerre again, his age being now 
thirty-eight. He had long sought to be commissioned to Ireland. At this time 
again, backed by the influence of (jermanus, he preferred his request to Rome — 
but was refused because Palladius had then been sent. When finally came the 
news of the failure and of the death of Palladius, Patrick journeyed to Rome, 
to Pope Celestine, carrying with him a letter from Germanus. Celestine now granted 
his request, and consecrated him Archbishop for the Irish mission. Also twenty 
priests and deacons were ordained, to be his companions in the undertaking. And 
at his consecration, says a tradition, three choirs answered: to wit, the choir of 
Heaven's household, the choir of the Romans, and the choir of the children of the 
Wood of Focluit, all singing: "Hiberniensis omnes clamant ad te, tuer." 

Celestine also conferred upon him his new name, Patricius — an ancient title 
of the highest honour among the Romans. 

It was on his last journey from Germanus to Rome that, tradition says, he 
got his famous Bachaill losa. Staff of Jesus — his pastoral staff, which is still 
preserved. SaiUng to Rome, he stopped at a house on an island in the Tyrrhenian 
Sea, says the story, a new house of a young married couple, who had children and 
grandchildren, old and decrepit. The lanamain, the young couple, had been married 
in the time of Jesus, who passed that way immediately after they were married, 
and received their hospitality — for which He blessed them and their house, and 
said that they and it should remain new and young till the Judgment Day. In 
their care He left His Staff, with injunction that it should be kept for Patrick 
against the day that he, too, passing that way, should there be entertained. "And 
God hath enjoined thee," said the young man to Patrick, "to go and preach in the 
land of the Gael. And Jesus left with us this staff to be given to thee." ^ 

Then, the desire of his life being crowned, he, at the age of sixty, with buoyant 
soul and gladdened heart, amid his rejoicing company, set forward from Rome, 
upon his momentous mission. On his way he stopped with Germanus, who pre- 
sented him with vestments, chalices, and books, and gave him advice and blessing. 

* He is said to have first landed near Vartry in the Ounty Wicklow — at about 
the same place at which Palladius before him, had arrived. There he preached 
and baptised, and like Palladius, was driven out. \^e sailed northward, and into 
Strangford Loch in Down, where landing he was again attacked. Dichu, a 
chieftain of the Dal Fiatach, taking Patrick and his company to be a band of 
British pirates, descended upon them. But Dichu was so struck with respect and 



ST. PATRICK 113 

On the eve of Easter, Patrick's party encamped at Slaine, on 
the left bank of the Boyne, opposite to and in sight of Tara; and 
Patrick lighted in front of his tent a fire which was visible at the 
king's court. Now a great festival was beginning at Tara, coinci- 
dent with the beginning of Patrick's Easter festival. And it was a 
gross violation of royal and ancient order that on this eve any fire 
should be lighted before the court Druids should light their sacred 
fire upon the royal Rath. Accordingly, when Laoghaire's 
astounded court beheld In the distance the blazing of Patrick's fire 
before the Druid fire had yet been lit, great was their consternation 
and high and hot their wrath, 

"What audacious miscreant," demanded the king, "has dared 
to do this outrage?" The Druids answered him that it was indeed 

veneration when Patrick faced him, that he lowered his arms, hearkened to the 
words of the apostle, and finally, with his family, was baptised. Patrick afterwards 
built a church on this spot, commemorating this first conversion of his, in the 
north. The place has since been called Sabhall Padraic — or corruptly, Saul. \ 

But Patrick craved to bring to Christ his old master, Miliuc. Forth then he 
fared toward the country of his captivity and the house of his master. But Miliuc 
is said to have grown furious when intelligence was brought him that Succat, his 
former slave, was journeying hence, bent on converting him to a new faith — 
and that he was winning all to whom he preached by the way ; for the new faith's 
appeal, voiced by Succat, no man could resist. Rather than submit to the mortifi- 
cation of being converted by his swineherd, the determined old pagan set fire to 
his house, and immolated himself in the flames. 

But a son of the old pagan was saved, and two daughters. They were con- 
verted, moreover, and the son lived to become a bishop, and the two daughters nuns. 

When Patrick arrived and found what had happened, and that his old master 
had removed himself from the reach of Christ, he is said to have shed floods of 
tears. He wended his way back to the territory of Lecale where he had first landed, 
and there did successful missionary work, converting and baptising Dichu's people. 
And having ordained priests for them, he sailed again southward, and landed at 
the mouth of the Boyne — with intention of proceeding to the court of the High King, 
Laoghaire, at Tara. He left his nephew, Luman, with some sailors in charge, in 
the boat, while he travelled inland — toward the royal Court. 

On his journey to Tara he won the love and the faith of a little lad who was 
destined to shine as the brightest and greatest of his disciples. He had stopped to 
rest and be refreshed at the house of the chieftain, Sesgne, and falling asleep in 
his seat beneath a tree, after he had eaten, a little son of Sesgne, Benin, whose 
love had gone out to him, now approached the resting warrior of Christ, and was 
strewing wild flowers over him — till he was stopped and rebuked. But Patrick, 
awaking, said, "Molest him not, for that youth shall yet heir my kingdom." And 
when, later, Patrick was entering his chariot to go forward, the little Benin, pressing 
through the surrounding throng, took hold of his hand crying: "Let me go, too." 
And Patrick added to his company the gentle and beautiful, sweet-voiced little 
Benin whose love he had won. The goodness and loveliness of the gentle-natured 
boy won all hearts to him — won for him even the love of the beautiful Ercnat, 
daughter of King Daire, of Ulster—which love he could not return, since he was 
bent upon giving himself to Christ. The sweet-voiced boy became Patrick's 
psalmist. Later, in Armagh, he became Patrick's coadjutor. And finally he heired 
and worthily filled Patrick's primatial chair in Armagh, and headed the school 
of Armagh, as well as ruled the church. And to the learned Benin (Benignus) 
is now attributed, by many scholars, the authorship of the great and valuable ancient 
Irish book, The Book of Rights. Others hold that Benin only re-wrote and revised 
this important work, which, they say, was compiled by Cormac MacArt, 200 years 
earlier. 



114 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

the Tallcenn of the old prophecy, come to supersede his rule, and 
their rule, in Eirinn. "Moreover," they said, "unless the fire on 
yonder hill be extinguished this very night, it shall never more be 
extinguished in Eirinn. It will outshine all fires that we light, and 
he who lit it will conquer us all: he will overthrow you, and his 
kingdom overthrow your kingdom : he will make your subjects his, 
and rule over them all forever." 

Then King Laoghaire, a splendidly determined old pagan, of 
like nature with Miliuc, angrily demanded that the transgressor 
should be dragged before him, with all the other foreign intruders 
who were supporting him. 

Then Patrick's camp was raided by Laoghaire's soldiers, and 
he and his companions ordered to march to Tara. 

An old tradition has it that, as, on Easter morning, the mission- 
aries proceeded in processional order, toward the king's court, they 
chanted the sacred Lorica, called the Faed Fiada, or Deer's Cry, 
specially composed by Patrick for their protection. It is said that 
as the minions of the Druids lay in ambush to intercept and kill 
them as they came to court, these evil ones now saw not Patrick 
and his companions pass, only saw pass a harmless herd of gentle 
deer, a doe followed by her twenty fawns. Hence the hymn's title, 
the Faed Fiada — Deer's Cry. And through all the centuries since, 
the Faed Fiada — which many old authorities pronounce to be Pat- 
rick's own work, and the first hymn written in Gaelic — has been 
used by the Irish Race as a lorica for protection.' 

5 I Christ here, 

I bind me to-day, g^^t be with me, 

God's might to direct me. Ch^^t beneath me, 

God's power to protect me, gH^t withm me, 

God's wisdom for learning, 3"^! u .^ "^^' 

God's eye for discerning. Christ be o er me, 

God's ear for my hearing. <-*i"st before me. 

God's word for my clearing. IV 

II Christ in the left and the right, 

God's hand for my cover - Christ hither and thither. 

God's path to pass over. Christ m the sight 

God's buckler to guard m^, Oi each eye that shall seek 

God's army to ward me, ^ "^^' , , ,, , 

Against snares of the devil, J" each ear that shall hear. 

Against vice's temptation, I" each mouth that shall speak 

Against wrong inclination, . "^^"7 

Against men who plot evil. Christ not the less 
Anear or afar, with many or ^ ^ .1" each heart I address. 

fg^y I bind me to-day on the Triune — I 

TTT ^^"' 

^^^ With faith in the Trmity— Unity- 

Christ near, God over all. 

This, Dr. Sigerson's rendering of the hymn is in the same measure, metre, 
and rhythm of the original. 



ST. PATRICK 115 

And having been carried safe by the Lord through the am- 
bushes prepared for them, Patrick led his host into the king's pres- 
ence, chanting: "Let them that will, trust in chariots and horses, 
but we walk in the name of the Lord." 

To impress and awe these foreigners, King Laoghaire with his 
queen and court, sat aloft in state, while his warriors, in silence, sat 
around in a great circle, with the rims of their shields against their 
chins. Laoghaire, evidently apprehensive of the secret power of 
the Tailcenn, had warned his court that none of the marks of re- 
spect which were the due of a stranger, should be shown to this 
bold aggressor. But so impressive was Patrick's appearance that 
immediately he came into their presence, Dubthach, the King's 
011am poet, arose, in respect for him; as also a young noble, Ere — 
who afterwards became Bishop Ere. And these two were Patrick's 
first converts at Tara. 

In the presence of King and court Patrick was first confronted 
with the Druids, who, it was hoped, would quickly confound him. 
But matching his miracles against their magic he showed to all that 
his powers far transcended theirs. He dispelled a darkness, which 
they, by their magical powers had produced, but were powerless to 
dissipate — "They can bring darkness," he significantly said, "but 
cannot bring light." He preached Christ to the assembly, and 
won to his Master the queen and several prominent members of 
the court. And, though Laoghaire's pagan faith was unshaken, 
he was so far won by the man Patrick that he gave him the freedom 
of his realm to preach the new faith where and to whom he would.® 

Patrick's next great preaching was to the vast assembly of the 
men of Eirinn, who had gathered at the Fair of Taillte. Though 

^ Laoghaire, we may here mention, died a pagan — killed by lightning. The 
Leinstermen had defeated him in the battle of Athgara, and taken him prisoner, 
at a time when he had gone to demand from them the Boru Tribute. They com- 
pelled him to take oath, by the sun, moon, and stars, that he would never again de- 
mand the tribute. But he broke his oath and went against them once more. 
Then Heaven's lightning, it is said, visited vengeance on him, for the breaking of 
the oath. He was buried in one of the old pagan fashions — in standing attitude, 
fully accoutred, and facing Leinster and his enemies. 

Among the many distinguished converts whom Patrick made at Tara on that 
occasion was a young noble, Fingar, who, because he had accepted and would not 
recant the new faith, was, by his father, Clito, driven into exile. With several 
other nobles who had become Christians he sailed to Brittany. When his father 
died, he returned to Ireland, and after renouncing his heritage, he took with him 
his sister, Fiala, and seven hundred men, including seven bishops, all of whom 
sailed away to devote themselves to religion, to enjoy Christ themselves, and give 
Christ to those other lands that had Him not. But the whole party was massacred 
in Cornwall by the Cornish King, Theodoric. 

The life of Fingar, written by St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, and 
preserved in Paris through long years, was finally published there, in the seven- 
.teenth century. 



ii6 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

at these national fairs the multitude always anticipated hearing and 
seeing many wonderful things — scholars, historians and poets of 
their own nation addressing them, sometimes scholars and travel- 
lers from far countries, as well as, always, foreign merchants bring- 
ing rare merchandise — the Fair of Taillte at the Lammas of 432 
furnished to the expectant multitude a rare sensation. When they 
beheld the procession of foreign clerics, all clad in strange gar- 
ments, and headed by a beautiful and venerable man, arrive chant- 
ing strange new chants, there surely was startling commotion — 
even at that Fair where sensations and commotions were many. 
Astonishing must have been the crush, and vast the crowd, of the 
tens and hundreds of thousands of fair-goers who now pushed and 
pressed to get nearer sight of this wonderful procession of chant- 
ing strangers — to learn who they were and whence, and what was 
their object in Eirinn. And when the venerable one who headed 
the procession addressed the seething crowds telling them that he 
was the ambassador of the King of the world's kings, describing 
to them his King's kingdom, telling them of the infinite love of his 
King for all of them, of His yearning desire to have them know 
Him, and to enter into and enjoy the kingdom whose beauties and 
whose pleasures, and whose riches and whose bliss, infinitely ex- 
ceeded all that the mind of man had ever before conceived or man's 
imagination in its powerfulest flight ever pictured, of His sending 
His own Son as His messenger to mankind, of the beauty and good- 
ness, meekness and lovableness of that Son, and then of His suf- 
ferings, His torture and death, at the hands of those whom He 
came to invite to the enjoyment of His Father's kingdom — how 
the bearded warrior throngs, and even the eager youths there must 
have been impressed, inspired, fired and melted; how the wild ones 
must have felt themselves tamed; and the haughty humbled; and 
the scornful sweetened; and the strenuous soothed; as eventually 
the mightily moved multitude — including a Prince, Conal, son of 
Niall, whose heart was there reached by the grace of God — bowed 
for the Tailcenn's blessing. 

He spent the next year preaching throughout Meath and Lein- 
ster. He went into the province of Connaught in 434. On his^ 
way there he visited the Plain of Magh Slecht, where stood the 
great idol Crom Cruach, before which, in the ancient time, Ti- 
ghernmas and his worshipping thousands had been slain by Heaven 
— and threw down this idol, along with the twelve others that stood 
around it. 

He met and converted King Laoghaire's two beautiful daugh- 
ters, Ethni the Fair, and Fedelm the Ruddy, who were at the Con< 



ST. PATRICK 117 

naught Palace of Cruachan, under the tuition of the two Druids, 
Mai and Coplait,^ 

On top of the mountain of Croagh Patrick in Connaught, he 
spent the forty days of Lent, watching, and fasting, and praying. 
And the tradition goes, as recorded by the Monk Jocelin that it 
was from this mountaintop he commanded all the serpents and 
venomous things in Ireland, driving them into the ocean, and rid- 
ding Ireland of all viperous things forever.* 

The Saint at length reached the Wood of Focluit dear to his 
memory — reached it at the time of a great assemblage of people 
and there preaching to those children of Focluit Wood, whose cries 
he had heard in his dream, he converted, it is told, the seven sons 
of the chieftain, Prince Amalgaid, and twelve thousand people. 

In 441 after seven years in Connaught, he proceeded by the 
narrow way between Benbulbin and the sea, into Ulster, where he 
spent four years travelling, preaching, baptising and church-build- 
ing. 

After that he preached through Leinster — on the way to which, 
the Dubliners, it is said, came out in crowds to meet him. And 
then on through Munster. At royal Cashel in Munster, he con- 
verted the king, Aongus." 

' He had to measure his power with these Druids, as with the Druids at Tara. 
To prevent his finding the palace of Cruachan, they, by their Druidic art, brought 
down upon the plain, for many miles around, a thick darkness which enveloped 
Patrick, his companions, the castle and all within the plain of Magh Air — a 
darkness which held that region for the space of three days and three nights. 
Then Patrick, in the name of Qirist, blessed the plain, so that the Druids alone 
remained in darkness, while the blessed light was restored to all others there. 
Finally Mai and Coplait were convinced and converted: — along with their charge, 
the beautiful princesses. 

8 Some centuries before, Solinus, the Roman writer, recorded that there were 
no snakes in Ireland — which belies the honoured tradition. V The tradition, how- 
ever, persists, and will always persist in the popular belief. There is a second 
legend in some parts of Ireland which says that one serpent, either through a 
fortunate slothfulness or some other cause, was not cast out with the others. \ Pat- 
rick, being later informed of this, induced the dilatory fellow to go down into the 
deep waters of Loch Neagh, on the promise, more ingenious than ingenuous, that 
he should be released therefrom "on the morrow." Since that time children liv- 
ing in the neighbourhood of Loch Neagh can hear the prisoned fellow raising his 
head above the waters, at the dawning of each new day, to inquire, "Is this day 
the morrow? Is this day the morrow?" But alas for him — for him, and for all 
unfortunates who wait for the morrow which never comes I 

8 When about to baptise the king, Patrick thrust his pastoral stafiF, by its sharp 
iron point, into the eartli — as he thought. \ But it iwas through the foot of Aongus 
he thrust it He discovered his grave mistake only when the ceremony was finished 
"Why did you not tell me this?" he cried to the king. And Aongus answered 
simply. "B€<:ause I thought it part of the ceremony." 

Twelve sons and twelve daughters of the heroic Aongus were consecrated to 
God. Aongus ordered that henceforth a capitation tax from his people should 
be paid to St Patrick and to his successors in Armagh. It was paid every third 
year, by the kings of Munster, down to the time of Cormac MacCullanan in the 
tenth century. 



ii8 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Patrick convened a Synod at Cashel, where he met his southern 
rivals, Saints Ailbe, Declan, Ciaran and Ibar, and after much argu- 
ment got their obedience. Ibar was the most obstinate and last 
to yield. For he was unwilling, says an account, that any one but 
a native of Ireland should be acknowledged the ecclesiastical patron 
of the country. 

After completing his work in Munster the Saint returned north 
again through Leinster into Ulster, where he was to spend six years 
more, visiting the churches, organising congregations and ordain- 
ing priests. 

He then founded Armagh — where was to be his See ^° — built his 
church, his monastery, and school. He made it the primatial 
city of the island. But, through the work and the fame of the great 
schools which were to develop there, it was to become, within a 
few centuries — to quote words of a great Continental scholar 
(Darmesteter) — "not only the ecclesiastical capital of Ireland but 
the capital of civilisation." 

His favourite disciple, Benignus (Benin), the herdboy, he put 
into his See of Armagh, to administer it for him, while he spent 
these years of his old age for the most part in tranquillity, some- 
times in Armagh and sometimes in his first church of Saball. 

In all likelihood it was during these tranquil years, when now 
his hardest work was over, that Patrick directed the compilation 
of the laws, known as the Senchus Mor. He got the law-givers to 

^<> The Hill of Armagh on which he founded his Archiepiscopal city was given 
him hy Daire, the chief of that district. Tradition says that Patrick saved the 
life of Daire; and as a token of his thanks, Daire sent to Patrick, by messenger, 
a brazen cauldron. When the messenger returned, the chieftain, desiring to have 
pictured to him the overwhelming gratitude which he had anticipated Patrick 
would display, asked what Patrick had said. And the messenger replied that the 
good man had said, "Gratias agam." "Gratchacam !" exclaimed Daire, "that's a 
poor reward for a goo(r~cauldron. Go take it from him again !" When the 
messenger returned with the cauldron. Daire once more asked what Patrick had 

Isaid when the cauldron was taken. The messenger answered that he had said, 
"Deo gratias !" "Gratchacam again !" exclaimed Daire. "Gratchacam is the first 
worcl with liim, and gratchacam the last. Gratchacam when giving it to him, 
and gratchacam when taking it away. The word must be good !" With his wife 
he then went to Patrick, and bestowed on him not only the cauldron but also the 
Hill of Armagh, for the building of his primatial city. Says the Four Masters, 
under the year 457 : "Ard Macha was founded by St. Patrick, it having been granted 
to him by Dari, son of Finneadh, son of Eogan, son of Niallan. Twelve men 
were appointed by him for building the town. He ordered them in the first place 
to build an archbishop's city there, and a church for monks, for nuns, and for the 
other orders in general ; for he perceived that it would be the head and chief of 
all the churches in Ireland." It is related that when he went with his men to 
mark out the city lines upon the hill, he came upon a doe that had just given birth 
to a fawn which the men would kill or roughly drive away. But Patrick lifted the 
helpless fawn tenderly in his arms, and bore it off where it could remain undis- 
turbed — while its mother meekly and trustingly followed, like a pet sheep. 



ST. PATRICK 119 

lay before him all the old laws, and, to codify and purge them, 
called into council upon them three kings, three bishops, three 
ollams, and they got a poet "to throw a thread of poetry around 
them." 

Now also it probably was that he wrote his famous Confession; 
and possibly also during this period his second most famous work, 
his Epistle to Coroticus — works which after fourteen hundred 
years, still live — and will live." They were written in the rather 
poor Latin of which Patrick was master, the provincial Latin of 
the Roman provinces. For, as he humbly stated again and again, 
he was not of the very learned; and he was profusely apologetic 
for his temerity in writing what would be read and criticised by 
the really learned ones, his contemporaries. 

*'I, Patrick the sinner, unlearned, no doubt," he humbly begins 
his Epistle to Coroticus, a British prince, who making a raid into 
Ireland, slaughtered many there, and carried off with him many 
captives — among them some of Patrick's newly baptised children 
of the Church. "With mine own hand," he says, "have I written 
and composed these words, to be given and handed to, and sent to, 
the soldiers of Coroticus." "On the day following that on which 
the newly baptised in white arraflf^ were anointed with the chrism, 
it was still gleaming on their foreheads, while they were cruelly 
butchered and slaughtered with the sword." 

1 In this intense document Patrick first gives utterance to that 
cry against British oppression which the agonising heart of Ireland 
has echoed every year of the past seven hundred and fifty years, jj 
"Is it a crime," he cries out, "to be born in Ireland? Have not we 
the same God as ye have?" He boldly demands return of the 
captives, and mercilessly castigates the tyrant who sacrilegiously 
carried them off. 

But of course Patrick's magnum opus, which will live forever, 
is his Confession. To others, Fathers of the faith, he had been 
calumniated. One whom he had held to be a dear friend turned 
disloyal to him and endeavoured to injure him in the eyes of these, 
his brethren. Amongst other things he informed them of a false 
step Patrick had taken in his youth. And he evidently had accused 
him of presumption and egotistical ambition, in assuming to him- 
self the task of converting Ireland. The Confession was written 
for the purpose of defending himself against the false charges. 

^^ These, his works, were preserved in the ancient Book of Armagh, into which 
they were copied by the scribe Firdomnach, about the year 810— there, too, copied, 
as Firdomnach states from the manuscript in Patrick's own handwriting. 

;f 



I20 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Timidly, and with characteristic humility, but still with a great 
calm, he opens this famous document: 

"I, Patrick, a sinner, the most rustic and the least of all the 
faithful, and in the estimation of very many deemed contemptible, 
had for my father Calpornius, a deacon, the son of Potitus, a pres- 
byter, who belonged to the village of Bannaven Taberniae; for 
close thereto he had a small villa, where I was made a captive. 

"At the time I was barely sixteen years of age, I knew not the 
true God; and I was led to Ireland in captivity with many thousand 
persons according to our deserts, for we turned away from God and 
kept not His commandments, and we were not obedient to our priests 
who used to admonish us about our salvation. And the Lord 
brought us the indignation of His wrath, and scattered us amongst 
many nations even to the utmost part of the earth, where now my 
littleness may be seen amongst strangers. 

"And there the Lord opened the understanding of my unbelief 
so that at length I might recall to mind my sins and be converted 
with all my heart to the Lord, my God, who hath regarded m> 
humility and taken pity on my youth and my ignorance, and kept 
watch over me before I knew Him, and before I had discretion, and 
could distinguish between good and evil; and He protected me and 
consoled me as a father does his son." 

The part of the Confession which many authorities adduce as 
testimony that Patrick, with his moderate learning, found himself 
in Ireland in the midst of very learned ones and great critics, is 
this: 

"For this reason I have long been thinking of writing, but up to 
the present I hesitated ; for I feared lest I should transgress against 
the tongue of men, seeing that I am not learned like others, who in 
the best style therefore have drunk in both laws and sacred letters 
in equal perfection ; and who from their infancy never changed their 
mother tongue; but were rather making it always more perfect. 

"My speech, however, and my style were changed into the tongue 
of the stranger, as can easily be perceived in the flavour of my writings 
how I am trained and instructed in languages, for as the wise man 
saith: 'By the tongue wisdom will be discerned, and understanding, 
and knowledge, and learning of the truth.' " 

Both his humility and his testimony to the scholars — a scornful 
one this time — are read out of the following passage of the Con- 
fession: 

"Whence I, at first a rustic and an exile, unlearned and surely 
as one who knows not how to provide for the future — yet th's I 



ST. PATRICK 121 

do most certainly know, that before, I was humble, I was like a 
stone which lies in the deep mire, and He that is mighty came and 
in His mercy lifted me up, and placed me on the top of the wall. 
And therefore I ought to cry out and render something to the Lord 
for these benefits so great both here and for eternity, that the mind 
of man can not estimate them. 

"Wherefor, be ye filled with wonder both small and great, who 
fear God, and ye too, lordly rhetoricians, hear and search out Who 
was it that exalted me, fool though I be, from the midst of those 
who seemed to be wise and skilled in the law, and powerful in word 
and in everything else? And me truly despicable in this world He 
inspired be3'ond others, though being such, that with fear and re\'er- 
ence, and without blame I should faithfully serve the nation to whom 
the love of Christ transferred me and bestowed me for my life, if I 
should be worthy — that in humility and truth I should serve them." ^^ 

Out of some later sentence in the Confession is taken apparent 
substantiation of Britain's claim on his nativity where he says: 

"Wherefore, however, I might have been willing to leave them, 
and go into the Brittaniae, as to my country and relatives, and not 
only so but also to the Gallise, to visit my brethren." 

"Again after a few years I was in the Brittaniae with my parents." 

This evidence, while colourable, Is far from being positive, in 
favour of his British birth. For one thing, Brittany may well have 
been called one of the Brittaniae — which It was; and In the next 
place, even If he referred to Britain proper, It does not follow that 
because his family, of which the father was a Roman official, was 
then In that particular province of the Roman Empire, he and his 
had been there at the time of Patrick's birth. 

The Confession testifies to Idol worship In Ireland where It 
says: 

"Whence Ireland, which never had the knowledge of God, but 
up to the present always adored idols and things unclean — how are 
they now made a people of the Lord, and are called the children of 
God? The sons of the Scots and the daughters of their chieftains 
are seen to become monks and virgins of Christ." 

And again his humility — and also a hint of the accusations made 
against him — in the following extracts : 

"And behind my back they were talking among themselves and 



^2 In neither of the foregoing instances, however, can we feel sure that he 
refers to Irish "rhetoricians," or learned ones. 



122 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

kept saying: 'Why does he expose himself to danger, amongst en- 
emies who know not God?' Not for malice sake, but because they 
did not approve it, as I myself can testify, and understand, on ac- 
count of my rusticity. . . . But though I be rude in all things, still 
I have tried to some extent to keep watch over myself. ... Or 
when the Lord ordained clergy everywhere by my mediocrity, and 
I gave them my ministrations gratis, did I ask from any of them so 
much as the price of a sandal ? Tell it against me and I shall restore 
you more. 

"Sufficient is the honour that is not seen but is believed in the 
heart. And He that promised the faithful. He never lies. But I 
see that in this present world I am exalted above measure by the 
Lord. And I was not worthy, nor am I such that He should grant 
this to me, since I know for certain that poverty and affliction be- 
come me better than riches and luxury. Nay, Christ the Lord was 
poor for our sake. But I, poor and wretched, even should I wish for 
wealth I have it not, nor do I judge myself, for daily I expect either 
a violent death or slavery, or the occurrence of some such calamity. 
But I fear none of these things on account of the promises of Heaven! 
I have cast myself into the hands of the Almighty God, for He rules 
everything. As the prophet saith: 'Cast thy cares upon the Lord, 
and He Himself will sustain them.* . . . Lo. again and again, I 
shall in brief set out the words of my Confession. I testify in truth 
and in the joy of my heart before God and His holy angels that I 
never had any motive except the Gospel and its promises in ever re- 
turning to that nation from which I had previously with difficulty 
made my escape.'' 

And the final paragraph — of the great Confession from which 
these few excerpts are taken : 

"But I pray those who believe and fear God, whosoever will 
have deigned to look on this writing which Patrick, the sinner and 
unlearned no doubt, wrote in Ireland, that no one shall ever say it 
was my ignorance (did it), that I have done God's will; but think 
ye, and let it be most firmly believed that it was the gift of God. 
And this is my Confession before I die." 

This powerfully appealing and magnificently simple document 
breathes in its e\'ery line the rare fragrance of a great and sincere, 
meek and beautiful heart, reverently bowed down in the palpable 
presence of God. The faultiness of the language in which it was 
originally written fails to mar this precious piece of the old world's 
literature. Patrick's Confession is a great picture of a great soul, 
painted by one who, scorning to give art one thought, was a great 
natural artist. He swept art aside — and despising it, triumphed 



ST. PATRICK 123 

over it, and by that very means triumphantly attained art's goal." 
After a full life, rich with great labours greatly done, and by 
Christ crowhed with success, thrice blessed by seeing the fruit ripen 
from the seed he sowed, Patrick passed away, at Down, in about 
the year 460 — leaving behind him a grief-stricken people who had 
made this man one of their own, and learnt to love him almost to 
the point of worship. The twelve days of his wake are known as 
Laithi na Caointe, the Days of Lamentation, when a whole nation 
whom he had brought to Christ, bewailed the most mournful loss 
a nation had ever known. 

"And for the space of twelve nights to wit the time during which 
the elders of Ireland were watching him with hymns and psalms and 
canticles, there was no night in Magh Inis, but an angelic radiance 
therein. And some say that angelic radiance abode in Magh Inis 
till the end of a year after Patrick's death. And so night was not 
seen in the whole of that region during the days of lamentation for 
Patrick. The odour of the divine grace which came from the body, 
and the music of the angels, brought sleep and joy to the elders of 
the men of Ireland who were watching the body." 

"Patrick, son of Calphronn, son of Potaide, Archbishop, first 
Primate, and Chief Apostle, of Ireland," say the Four Masters, 
"whom Pope Celestine the First had sent to preach the Gospel, and 
disseminate religion and piety among the Irish, was the person who 
separated them from the worship of idols and spectres, who con- 
quered and destroyed the idols which they had for worshipping, who 
expelled demons and evil spirits from among them, and brought them 
from the darkness of sin and vice to the light of faith and good works, 
and who guided and conducted their souls from the gates of hell to 
which they were going, to the gates of the kingdom of heaven. It 



"Another work of Patrick's which is lost, is referred to, by his biographer 
Tirechan, under the title of Commemmoratio Laborum. 

In the noted work, The Book of Rights, ascribed to his disciple Benignus, is 
found the Blessing of St. Patrick, which some think is one of Patrick's poems : 

"The Blessing of God upon you all, 
Men of Erin, sons, women, 
And daughters ; prince-blessing, 
Meal-blessing, blessing of long life, 
Health-blessing, blessing of excellence, 
Eternal blessing, heaven-blessing, 
Qoud-blessing, sea-blessing. 
Fruit-blessing, land-blessing, 
Crop-blessing, dew-blessing, 
Blessing of elements, blessing of valour, 
Blessing of dexterity, blessing of glory. 
Blessing of deeds, blessing of honour, 
Blessing of happiness be upon you all, 
Laics, clerics, while I command 
The blessing of the men of Heaven ; 
It is my bequest, as it is a Perpetual Blessing." 



124 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

was he that baptised and blessed the men, women, sons and daughters 
of Ireland, with their territories and tribes, both fresh waters and 
sea inlets. It was by him that many cells, monasteries and churches 
were founded throughout Ireland, seven hundred churches was their 
number. It was by him that bishops, priests, and persons of every 
dignity were ordained, seven hundred bishops and three thousand 
priests was their number. He worked so many miracles and won- 
ders, that the human mind is incapable of remembering or record- 
ing the amount of good which he did uf>on the earth. The body of 
Patrick was afterwards buried at Dunda-leth-glas, with great honour 
and veneration. And during the twelve nights that the religious 
seniors were watching the body, with psalms and hymns, it was not 
night in Magh-Inis, or tlie neighbourhoods, as they thought, but as 
if it were the full undarkened light of day." 

And says the ancient Tripartite Life of Patrick: 

"Now after founding churches in plenty; after consecrating mon- 
asteries; after baptising the men of Ireland; after great patience and 
after great labour; after destroying idols and images and after re- 
buking many kings who did not his will, and after raising up those 
who did his will; after ordaining three hundred and three score and 
ten bishops, and after ordaining three thousand priests and folk of 
every grade in the church besides; after fasting and prayer; after 
mercy and clemency; after gentleness and mildness to the sons of 
Life; after love of God and his neighbours, he received Christ's body 
from the bishop, from Tassach, and then he sent his spirit to Heaven. 
His body, however, is here still on earth, with honour and venera- 
tion. And though great be the honour to it here, greater will be 
the honour to it on Doomsday, for it will shine like a sun in Heaven, 
and then it will give judgment on the fruit of his preaching, even 
as Peter and PauL It will abide thereafter in the union of patriarchs 
and prophets, in the union of the saints and holy virgins of the world, 
in the union of the apostles and disciples of Jesus Christ, in the union 
of the church both of Heaven and earth ; in the union of the nine 
ranks of Heaven that transgress not, in the union of the Godhead and 
manhood of God's son, in the union that is nobler than any union, 
the union of the Trinity, Father and Son and Holy Ghost." 

Thus passed away one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest, 
that Ireland ever knew, or ever will know — still more, one of the 
dominant personalities of world history, whose influence will end 
only with the final running out of the sands of Time. What Con- 
fucius was to the Oriental, Moses to the Israelite, Mohammed to 
the Arab, Patrick was to the Gaelic race. And the name and the 



ST. PATRICK 125 

power of those other great ones will not outlive the name and the 
power of our Apostle. 

"A righteous man, verily, was this man. With purity of nature, 
like the patriarchs. A true pilgrim like Abraham. Mild, forgiving 
from the heart, like Moses. A praiseworthy psalmist like David. 
A shrine of wisdom, like Solomon. A joyous vessel for proclaiming 
righteousness, like Paul the Apostle. A man full of the grace and 
the favour of 'the Holy Ghost, like John the child. A fair herb- 
garden with plants of virtues. A vine-branch with fruitfulness. A 
flashing fire with the fervour of the warming and heating of the 
sons of Life, for kindling and for inflaming charity. A lion for 
strength and might. A dove for gentleness and simplicity. A ser- 
pent for prudence and cunning as to good. Gentle, humble, merci- 
ful unto the sons of Life. Gloomy, ungentle to the sons of Death. 
A laborious and serviceable slave to Christ. A king for dignity 
and power as to binding and loosing, as to liberating and enslaving, 
as to killing and quickening life." 

One of the secrets of the wonderful power he has wielded over 
the Irish, and one of the secrets of his world-popularity, was the 
rare combination in him of the spiritual with the human. Among 
saints, Patrick is eminently saintly, and very, very human among 
human beings. His shining virtues make him kin of the angels, 
while his human frailties — Celtic frailties — his passionateness, his 
impetuosity, his torrential anger against tyrants, his teeming fierce- 
ness against sinners in high place, his biting scathe and burning 
scorn, made men feel that he was a brother to all men — especially 
to all Irishmen. More surely did these qualities win the Irish Celt 
when they found in him combined the terror of a warrior with the 
tenderness of a woman; the ferocity of a tiger, with the gentleness 
of a lamb. The same Patrick who had tenderly lifted on his shoul- 
ders and carried to safety the fawn of Armagh Hill later thun- 
dered denunciations at the plundering, murdering Coroticus and 
his men — "fellow-citizens of demons," "slaves of hell," "dead 
while they live," "patricides, fratricides, ravening wolves, eating 
up the people of the Lord like breadstuffs!" It was only a man 
of such terrible passion and such ineffable tenderness who could 
have gained, as quickly as Patrick did, complete moral ascendancy 
over the Irish nation — so amazingly compelling their allegiance, 
obedience, faith, belief and trust as in one generation to work that 
wondrous change which called forth the testimony by the old poet 
(put into the mouth of the returned Caoilte) : "There was a 
demon at the butt of every grass-blade in Eirinn before thy ad- 



\ 



126 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

vent; but at the butt of every grass-blade in Eirinn to-day there is 
an angel." 

And that Caoilte's figure of speech finds its justification in the 
historical records of those days we shall admit, when we contrast 
the two widely differing natures of the Irish people Avho before 
Patrick were carrying the ruthless law of the sword far over sea 
and land, and that very different Irish people who, after Patrick, 
left the conquering sword to be eaten by rust, while they went far 
and wide again over sea and land, bearing now to the nations — 
both neighbouring and far off — the healing balm of Christ's gentle 
words. All histories of all countries probably could not disclose 
to the most conscientious searcher another instance of such radical 
change in a whole nation's character being wrought within the life- 
span of one man. 

An unquenchable burning desire for bringing souls to Christ 
was the passion of Patrick's life. And he pursued his passion with 
an unremitting perseverance, with a greatness of mind and a gran- 
deur of soul that has infrequently been paralleled in missionary 
annals, and seldom surpassed. 

And this singularly great man was, as we have seen, steeped in 
humility: "I was a stone, sunk in the mire till He who is power- 
ful came, and in His mercy, raised me up." He was possessed of 
that great humility and subHme simplicity which is attained never 
except by moral giants." 

It is of interest to note that the traditions of Patrick which 
linger down the ages represent him not merely as a saint, law-giver, 
statesman, and a brother of the common people, but ever, also, as 
an admirer of the literary men, scholars, and poets of the nation, 

i*This singular humility of his as well as his characteristic impetuosity, are 
both well illustrated in the account given us of the origin of Sechnall's Hymn — 
made in Patrick's honour and published to him with fear and trembling of the 
author. Sechnall made the hymn by way of amends for having angered Patrick 
by an imprudent criticism. For. Patrick did not please all his fellow-workers, by 
reason that he asked not sufficient contributions from the faithful for the support 
of himself and his fellows. So Sechnall once said: "Patrick is a good man, were 
it not for one thing, that he preaches charity so very little." When this came 
to Patrick's ears he, in a holy rage, got into his chariot, and set out for Sechnall, 
whom he drove his chariot against — some say drove it over — "What is that one 
thing thou saidst I did not fulfil? For if I fulfil not charity, I am guilty of 
breaking God's commandment." He added : "It is for sake of charity that I 
preach not charity : for other good men will come after us, who, more than we, 
will need the support of the faithful." 1 

Sechnall made his hymn as a peace offering, and brought it to Patrick. "What 
is it that you have there?" Patrick asked. "A hymn," replied Sechnall. "that I 
made for a certain son of Light. I desire you to listen to it." Patrick answered • 
"I welcome the praise of a man of God's household." And Sechnall held Patrick's 
ear and won approval and praise from him by artfully hiding, till he came to the 
end, the fact that Patrick himself was the subject. 



ST. PATRICK 127 

and an ardent lover of their profane literature. In the Ossianic 
tales are many evidences of this. The Colloquy of the Ancients 
again and again shows the old poets building upon Patrick's love 
of the national lore. This love, indeed, is so strong in him, that 
he fears it may be sinful — until he questions his guardian angel, 
and gets his approval for the delightful indulgence of barkening 
to Caoilte's fascinating stories of the Fenians. And he is so 
charmed with them that he orders them to be written down, so as 
to preserve them for the delight of future generations of the noble 
men of Eirinn. 

"Palm of eloquence on thee, my son," Patrick says to Caoilte, 
"and let every third word uttered by men of thine art seem melo- 
dious to every hearer, and let one of them possessed of the skill 
always be a king's bedfellow and the torch of every assembly." 

ijln recent times several ingenious people have demonstrated to 
their own complete satisfaction that Patrick was a Protestant, a 
Methodist, a Presbyterian, a Baptist — a Jew even — almost every- 
thing except what he was — and that he founded in Ireland an in- 
dependent church which they call the Celtic Church. These absurd 
contentions are set at rest — if they needed setting at rest — by the 
Canon of St. Patrick, preserved in the old Book of Armagh — 
which was finished by the scribe Firdomnach in 807 — a Canon 
which those very learned Protestant Irish scholars, Usher and 
Whitley Stokes, accept as proof of his Roman authority and affilia- 
tion." 

"Moreover, if any case should arise of extreme difficulty, and 
beyond the knowledge of all the judges of the nations of the Scots, 
it is to be duly referred to the chair of the Archbishop of the 
Gaedhil, that is to say, of Patrick, and the jurisdiction of this bishop 
(of Armagh). But if such a case as aforesaid, of a matter at issue, 
cannot be easily disposed of (by him), with his counsellors in that 
(investigation), we have decreed that it be sent to the apostolic seat, 
that is to say, to the chair of the Apostle Peter, having the authority 
of the city of Rome. 

"These are the persons who decreed concerning this matter, viz.: 
Auxilius, Patrick, Secundinus, and Benignus, But after the death 
of St. Patrick his disciples carefully wrote out his books." 

*^ Even if, by straining of the imagination, we should suppose this document 
to be forged by Firdomnach — without any conceivable reason for forging it then — 
it shows that, at the time Firdomnach wrote it, the See of Armagh, the centre of 
the church in Ireland, was subordinate to the Pontiff. 

Again within the Century after Patrick we find the great Columbanu?, when 
submitting to Pope Gregory the question of his dispute with the Gaulish ecclesias- 
**^, saying, "We Irish . . . are bound to the Chair of Peter." 



128 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Healy, The Most Rev. Jno.: St. Patrick. 

Stokes, Whitley, D.C.L., LL.D. : The Tripartite Life of St. Patrick 

Lannigan, Rev. Jno., D.D. : Ecclesiastical Plistory of Ireland. 

Keating's History of Ireland. 

Bury, J. B., LL.D.: Tirechan's Memoir of St Patrick; printed in Eng. 

Hist. Rev. for 1902. 
Todd, James Henthorn, D.D. : Memoir of St Patrick. 
Jocelyn: Life of St Patrick, 
O'Curry, Eugene: Manuscript Materials of Irish History. 



^x 



CHAPTER XX 

THE BREHON LAWS 

We may here take a glimpse at those marvellous Institutes, the 
old Irish laws which Patrick is credited with codifying — and the 
study of which, in these later days, throws a flood of light upon 
both the intellectual and the social condition of early Ireland. 

Marvellous they are — and have excited the wonder and ad- 
miration not of laymen only, but of eminent jurists deeply versed 
in law codes both ancient and modern. It has proved amazing to 
modern scholars in other countries to find such a great and such a 
just and beautiful judicial structure reared up, in dim centuries of 
antiquity, in one little island seated on the waters of a wide ocean, 
far off on the rim of the world. 

Of the great body of ancient Irish law literature still existing, 
five large volumes have been printed — the principal part of these 
being the Senchus Mor, supposed to be the fruits of Patrick's en- 
deavour — and their ordinances appropriately called after him Cain 
Padraic, that is, the Statute Law of Patrick. When we reflect 
that these five volumes are but a portion of what came down to 
the twentieth century, and that what came to the twentieth century 
was necessarily but a small fraction of the ancient Irish Cana or 
ordinances, we get some impression of the vastness of the law 
literature of ancient Ireland. When it is stated that in the ancient 
glosses upon the Senchus Mor citations are made from no less 
than fourteen different books of civil law; and that Cormac in his 
later Glossary (about tenth century) quotes from five law books 
only one of which is among the fourteen of the Senchus glosses, 
that also will give the reader a little idea of the multitude of law 
books that there must have been prior to the tenth century in 
which the scholar Cormac wrote. 

And realising the vastness of the body of the old Irish laws, 
the reader will not wonder to learn these laws covered almost every 
relationship, and every fine shade of relationship, social, and moral, 
between man and man. 

129 



I30 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

The ancient Irish laws are now popularly termed, "The Brehon 
Laws" — from the Irish term Brehon which was applied to the 
official lawgiver.^ The Brehon was an important officer at all royal 
Courts, from the most remote times of which we have any shred 
of record, historical or even legendary. The precepts and maxims 
of famous law givers, men and women, of legendary days are 
quoted to us through famous successors who just came within the 
horizon of history. Even a famous woman law-giver of pre- 
historic times is thus commemorated in Briathra Brigid, or the 
judgments of a very ancient wise Brigid, cited by the earliest 
writers. 

One of the most famous of ancient historic personages cele- 
brated as a law-giver, was, as mentioned heretofore Cormac Mac- 
Art, in the third century. Cormac's chief judge, too, Fithal the 
Wise, wrote his name on fame's honour-roll. But some centuries 
earlier, in the time of Christ, flourished Irish law-givers, who are 
still known to fame. Senchan, the son of Ailill was then chief 
judge of Ulster, at Conor MacNessa's court. The venerated 

1 Instead nf filling the position of judge (as usually supposed) the Brehon 
was rather a legal expert who devoted himself to arbitration — and sometimes to 
advising — and was paid a fee from his client — a fee that in case of an award was 
about one-twelfth of the amount awarded. In studying for the profession the 
Brehon had not only to make himself master of the ancient legal records, and of 
the very complicated legal rules, the abstruse technical terms, and all the intricate 
forms in which the law was purposely entangled, but he must also be a genealogist 
and historian. 

Though the Brehon was but an arbitrator, so scholarly was he, so skilled 
in the laws and so wise and weighty in his solemn judgments, that, sitting at a 
Dal, where two witnesses were needed to prove a fact, his words were venerated 
and his awards sacredly respected — as though they were the awards of a judge 
consecrated to the judgment seat, and rare was it to find any person hardened 
enough to evade or reject them. 

But it should be recorded that there were lawjers, or law arguers — advocates — 
of a very much lower status, much less learned and much less honoured than the 
Brehon — men who were paid to argue cases before the Brehon. It is some of 
those lawyers — not unlike many of our own day — whom Cormac raps in the 
ancient "Instructions of a Kin;?" — 

"O Cormac, grandson of Conn," said Carbery, "what is the worst pleading and 
arguing?" 

"Not hard to tell," said Cormac. 

"Contending against knowledge, 

Contending without proofs, 

Taking refuge in bad language, 

A stiflF delivery, 

A muttering speech. 

Hair-splitting, 

Uncertain proofs. 

Despising books, 

Turning against custom. 

Shifting one's pleading. 

Inciting the mob. 

Blowing one's own trumpet, 

Shouting at the top of one's voice." 



THE BREHON LAWS 131 

Morann the son of Maen (or of Cairbre), lived then. Athairne, 
the bitterest of ancient satirists, was also a lawyer at the court of 
King Conor. Ferceirtne, Conor's chief poet, was famed in law, 
likewise. But up to the era of Ferceirtne the poet-brotherhood held 
a monopoly of all legal knowledge. It has already been described 
how this monopoly was, by the indignant Conor, shattered — after 
he and his court had, non-understandingly, barkened to the famous 
dispute, Agallam na da Suach (the Contest of the two Sages), 
between Ferceirtne and Neide — some say between Aithairne and 
Neide — contending for the poet's tiiigin. For in order to shut out 
the laity from the legal profession, and also for purpose of duly 
impressing the said laity with their dazzling erudition, the lawyers 
wrapped the law in a phraseology so obsolete that none but the 
initiated could understand the legal language. Conor, in his wrath, 
on this occasion, deprived the poet order of their exclusive right to 
legal knowledge and practice, and opened the field to everybody. 

Yet, notwithstanding this supposed great reform of Conor's 
at the beginning of the Christian Era, the lawyers of a couple of 
centuries later were again indulging their vanity and their exclu- 
siveness, concealing their legal wisdom under obsolete verbiage. 
We find, for instance, that though the Senchus Mor was profusely 
glossed by law students some centuries later, and after some fur- 
ther centuries the gloss itself glossed to bring it within the range 
of legal understanding of that day, O'Curry, learned student 
though he was in ancient glosses, still had the most infinite difficulty 
in picking out the meaning of the greater part of the work, and 
had to be content with giving the probable meaning of many pas- 
sages, and leaving in their primitive obscurity, some things that ut- 
terly baffled him." 

This Brehon law remained the law of three-quarters of Ireland 
for several centuries after the coming of the English — was in fact 
adopted by a large portion of the English settlers themselves, to 
the exclusion of the Anglo-Norman code — and it may be said not 
to have gone out of existence as living law till the sixteenth century. 

The advancement of civilisation in early Ireland was such that 
the legislative and the judicial functions were separated at a period 
before the dawn of history. While the Brehon administered the 
law, the king, the nobles, and the professors of the various branches 
of learning, were responsible for originating it. Even for the 
making of a local law called Nos Tuaighe — literally "the Nine 
knowledge of a territory," the aggregate wisdom of nine leading 

- Of course part of the difficulty — but not all — arose from progress of language. 



132 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

representatives was necessary — all of whom had to agree to its 
institution, and all of whom had to sanction its abolition. The 
nine needed for the making of a local law were the chief, poet, 
historian, brugaid (hospitaller), bishop, professor of literature, 
professor of law. Aire Forgaill (a noble) and Archinnech (lay- 
vicar). 

The local traditional, or customary, law of particular terri- 
tories was called Urradus, as distinct from national law which was 
iC^ain law. And be it noted that when the Cain or national law 
conflicted with the Urradus, or local traditional law, the traditional 
territory law was acknowledged as annulling the national. 

Of the many collections of ancient Irish laws the most famous 
known to scholars, are the Meill Brethra, or Mild Judgments, said 
to have been written at Tara in the time of Conn, and which had 
to do with regulations for juvenile sports (and of which only the 
name now remains) : second, the Cain Fulrthime, a body of Mun- 
ster laws in twelve books, compiled by Amergin, for King Finghin 
of Munster (who died in 694), which, like the Meill Brethra, 
have been lost also: third, the Crith Gablach (which O'Curry 
thinks was a part of the Cain Fuirthime), which is still preserved: 
fourth, the Book of Acaill (third century) still preserved: and 
fifth, the Senchus Mor, still preserved. The last three named are 
included in the five volumes of the Brehon Laws which were re- 
cently printed by the Brehon Law Commission. 

The Crith Gablach defines the rights and privileges of the 
various ranks of society. O'Curry says it undoubtedly belongs 
to the middle or end of the seventh century, and thinks it probable 
that it was part of the Cain Fuirthime. 

The Book of Acaill is attributed to King Cormac MacArt and 
brought up to a later date by that famous scholar and most re- 
markable man, Ceannfalad, who flourished in the seventh century. 
As usual in the ancient Irish books, the Book of Acaill starts by 
telling the place, the time, and the cause of its writing, and the 
author. It says : "The place of this Book is Acaill close to Tern- 
hair, and its time is the time of Coirpre Lifechair, son of Cormac, 
and its author is Cormac, and the cause of its having been com- 
posed was the blinding of the eye of Cormac by Aengus Gabuai- 
dech after the abduction of the daughter of Sorar son of Art Corb, 
by Cellach son of Cormac. And Ceannfalad did part of it." The 
Book of Acaill is chiefly a record of criminal law and laws relat- 
ing to personal injuries. 

The Senchus Mor is the most monumental and remarkable rec- 
ord of ancient Irish law. In contradistinction to the Book of 



THE BREHON LAWS 133 

Acaill, it deals entirely with civil law. This is believed to have 
been the great work of Patrick. He called together all the pro- 
fessors of legal law, with their many law records, and he had 
Dubthach (one of his first converts), "a vessel full of the grace of 
the Holy Ghost" and the great scholar at Laeghaire's court, in- 
terpret them to him. (For Patrick had blessed Dubthach's mouth, 
and the grace of the Holy Ghost alighted on his utterance.) Then 
he had a board of three kings, three bishops and three scholars (a 
philosopher, a historian and a poet) sit upon them for three years, 
codifying and correcting them, taking out of them the pagan eye- 
for-an-eye doctrine, toning down their pagan severity, and weeding 
out from them whatsoever was inconsistent with the new law of 
Christ, which he had brought to them. 

O' Curry (in his Manuscript Material of Irish History) says 
the recorded account of this great revision of the body of the laws 
of Erin is as fully entitled to confidence as any other well-authen- 
ticated fact in history. 

The very ancient introduction to the Senchus Mor finely de- 
scribes how the work was produced.^ 

"It was then that all the professors of the sciences in Erin were 
assembled, and each of them exhibited his art before Patrick, in the 
presence of every chief in Erin. 

"It was then Dubthach was ordered to exhibit the judgments 
and all the poetry of Erin, and every law which prevailed among 
the men of Erin, through the law of nature, and the law of seers, 
and in the judgments of the island of Erin, and in the poets. 

"Now the judgments of true nature which the Holy Ghost had 
spoken through the mouths of the Brehons and just poets of the men 
of Erin, from their occupation of this island, to the reception of the 
faith, were all exhibited by Dubthach to Patrick. What did not 
clash with the Word of God in the written law and in the New 
Testament, and with the consciences of the believers, was confirmed 
in the laws of the Brehons by Patrick and by the ecclesiastics and the 
chieftains of Erin ; for the law of nature had been quite right, ex- 
cept the faith, and its obligations. And this is the Senchus Mor." 

The Senchus Mor as it has been preserved to us to-day is com- 
posed of four parts — namely, the introduction describing when 
and how it came to be written; then the original text, written in a 

' It also telh us where the work was done : 

"It was Teamhair in the summer and autumn on account of its cleanness and 
pleasantness during these seasons ; and Rathguthaird was the place during the 
winter and spring, on account of the nearness of its firewood and water, and on 
account of its warmth in the time of winter's cold." 



134 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

large hand, and with very wide spaces between the lines; third, 
commentaries on the text, written in a much smaller hand, just 
beneath the lines of the original; and fourth, glosses or explana- 
tions of the words and phrases in the text, written under the com- 
mentaries, and in a hand still smaller. The text is more archaic 
than the commentaries, and the commentaries more so than the 
glosses. The sentences in the original text are so skeleton-like, 
terse and suggestive, that it is considered they are mere headings 
meant to be expounded and extended in courses of oral instruction. 

The laws in the Senchus Mor, like all the old Brehon Laws, 
were rarely legislative enactments. Some few undoubtedly, were 
enacted, but most of them were laws of user, which obtained their 
force from public opinion. And a vast body of the laws were prec- 
edents and commentaries of venerated law-givers of earlier times. 

The whole superstructure of the ancient Irish civil law (as 
again and again proclaimed) rested upon the foundation of the 
sanctity of verbal contract. "For," says the old law-giver, "the 
world would be in confusion if verbal contracts were not binding." 

O'Curry pointedly and succinctly tells us of these contract pro- 
visions in the Senchus Mor: 

"The Senchus Mor contains a system of law respecting Contracts, 
in wliich every species of contract, bargain, or engagement is defined, 
and the competency or incompetency, and the rights and duties, of 
the contracting parties made clear; by which a penalty is incurred for 
the non-performance of every separate kind of contract ; false and 
fraudulent contracts annulled, and fraud punished ; and under which 
judges and officers are provided to decide all disputes concerning 
contracts, the decisions of such judges being in all cases enforced by 
the power and authority of the state. It is curious to remark that, 
under this ancient system, neither the judge nor the advocate — of the 
latter of whom there were, it appears, three grades or classes, — ^was 
held harmless in cases of false or corrupt judgments, or faulty or 
incompetent advocacj." * 

* O'Curry gives a highly interesting enumeration of the various kinds of law 
that are embodied in this marvellous record — a list that will surprise those who 
hitherto knew little about the subject of ancient Irish law. He shows that the 
Senchus Mor includes : 

The laws defining all the different species of Bargains, Contracts, and Engage- 
ments between man and man. 

The laws respecting Property entrusted or given in charge by one man to 
another ; and the Liability of the person trusted, in case of loss or damage, whether 
by accident or design. 

The laws respecting Gifts and Presents, and respecting .\lms and Endowments. 

The laws as to Waifs and Strays, Derelictions, and the Abandonment and Re- 
sumption of Property. 

The law of Loans, Pledges, Accommodations, and Securities. 



THE BREHON LAWS 135 

Although O'Curry again and again says that there was an 
executive power attendant upon the judicial — that the state en- 
forced the Brehon's decision — there is the best reason to believe 
that the exeaitive power was, not official, but that greatest of all 
powers, especially in Ireland, the moral power of public opinion. 
Everybody considered it his bounden business to see that the pro- 
nouncement of their venerated Brehons were observed to the letter, 
and the verdict summarily executed. And despite the sean-fhocal 

The law of Prescription, or lapse, and of the Recovery of Possession of 
Property. 

The laws concerning the relation of Father and Son, and the legal and 
illegal contracts of the son as connected therewith. 

The laws respecting illegitimate Children ; as to Affiliations, and the Adoption 
of children. 

Laws minutely regulating the Fees of Doctors, Judges, Lawyers, and Teachers, 
and of all other professional persons. 

A series of laws concerning the varied species of Industry : such as Weaving, 
Spinning, Sewing, Building, Brewing, etc. ; concerning Mills and Weirs ; concerning 
Fishing; concerning Bees, Poultry, etc. 

Laws with respect to Injuries to Cattle; by neglect, by over-driving, etc. 

Laws concerning Fosterage, and the relative duties of Parents and Children, 
Foster-fathers and Foster-mothers ; including details of a very curious kind, 
respecting the training, food, clothing, etc., of all foster-children, from the king 
to the peasant. 

A very complicated, yet clearly defined series of laws for Landlord and Tenant, 
and Master and Servant ; explaining the different species of lords and masters, of 
tenants and of servants ; and the origin and termination of Tenantry and Service. 

Laws concerning Trespass and Damage to Land, whether by man or beast. 

A curious series of laws concerning Co-Occupancy of Land ; and concerning 
the dividing, hedging, fencing, paling, ditching and walling, and the ploughing 
and stocking of land. 

Laws of Evidence ; of Corroborative Testimony ; and of Compurgation. 

The law of Distress and Caption ; including most minute details, which appear 
to embrace almost every possible point that could be made concerning the legality 
or illegality of a Distress or Seizure. 

The laws of Tithes and First Fruits ; and concerning the relations of the 
Church with the state or nation (a law, doubtless introduced at the direct sugges- 
tion of St. Patrick). 

Laws concerning the regulation of Churches and the tenants of Church lands, 
and the servitors of Churches and Ecclesiastical establishments. 

In Criminal Law ; complete laws respecting Manslaughter and Murder, dis- 
tinguishing accurately between principals and accessories before and after the act. 

Laws concerning Thefts, and the receiving and recovery of stolen property; 
in the greatest possible detail. 

Laws concerning the infliction of Wounds and the shedding of Blood ; and 
with regard to the commission of violence by insane as well as by sane persons. 

And lastly, laws concerning Accidental Injuries; as from sledges, hammers, 
flails, hatchets, and other implements connected with peaceful labour. 

After perusing that wonderful list of only one collected portion of the laws 
of Ireland in the early centuries of the Christian Era, the reader can, for himself, 
hazard a guess at the very advanced state of early Irish civilisation which evolved 
and called forth such laws — and which evolved, too, a professional body of highly- 
trained law-givers. Overtrained indeed Brehons often came to be, and so steeped 
in, and saturated with, their science, that, passing beyond the love of law for 
justice sake, many of the noted ones, as shown by their rulings, their commen- 
taries, and anecdotes of them, came at length to pursue law for law's sake, and 
loved to indulge themselves, and dazzle the multitude, by elaborate quibblings, 
and the working out of fantastically far-fetched legal problems. 



136 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

that everybody's business is nobody's business, we know that, so 
far as concerned carrying out the judgments of the Brehons, every- 
body's business was truly the business of each. 

As a sample of judicial procedure in civil law we set down the 
usual course followed in recovering for a debt. A fasc (summons) 
was first served upon the debtor, in which were entered the details 
of the claim, and demand for payment made according to law. A 
certain number of days of grace was then allowed the debtor, after 
which, if the debt was not paid, a gabail (distress)^ was laid upon 
some portion of his property — almost always on his live-stock. 
For this purpose the creditor took with him a law agent and seven 
witnesses, and attached, but did not then carry off, the seized 
goods. There was an anad (stay) of a day or days — to give the 
debtor a second chance of paying. If he did not pay within the 
anad, the distrained goods were lifted — the cattle, say, driven off, 
and placed in a pound. An apad (notice) was then served upon 
the debtor, telling him that the cattle were taken, and informing 
him just where they were impounded. Then followed a dithim, 
another stay, to give the debtor yet another chance for redeeming 
his property. If, when the dithim had expired, the debtor had not 
redeemed his property, the next stage, the lobad (wasting) be- 
gan; that is, instead of selling all of the seized property for the 
immediate and complete satisfying of the debt, it was sold in por- 
tions — out of still further regard for, and mercy toward, the debtor. 

But if, when the creditor with his agent and witnesses first 
went to distrain, the debtor denied the claim, and demanded trial 
of the case — or if he agreed to pay after the expiration of a cer- 
tain time — he got a stay of execution on giving pledge (gell), or 
giving bail. If, then, the debtor did not fulfil the conditions of the 
stay of execution, the pledge, or the bail, was forfeited, and the 
levying of the distress proceeded. Sometimes he gave his own son 
in pledge. In that case the services of the son were forfeit, if the 
conditions were not fulfilled — the son became the bondsman of the 
creditor, till the debt was worked out. If he had been bailed the 
athire (bailsman) became the creditor's bondsman, in the same 
case, if he could not meet the liabilities of him whom he had bailed. 
If the debtor was superior in rank to the creditor, the latter had 
to try fasting upon his debtor before he could seize his goods." 

5 Sullivan, in his introduction to O'Curry derives the word gaol from gabail 
(pron., gow-ail), which originally meant a distress by the body. 

« This fasting upon a debtor, or upon a wronger, which is an Eastern custom 
still or till recently practised in some parts of India, was a common enough practice 
in olden times in Ireland. A creditor wanting payment of his debt from a superior, 
or a wronged person demanding justice, or any one demanding any right to which 



THE BREHON LAWS 137 

The most notable way in which Patrick deprived the ancient 
law of its severity was his substitution of eric-law for the Lex 
Talionis. Under the new law a graduated system of money fines, 
called eric, was substituted for the eye-for-an-eye ordinance of the 
old. Only, when the criminal or his family or tribe did not pay 
liis eric, the law sanctioned his personal punishment — which, more- 
over, might even then, instead of following the old method, take 
the form of his being sold as a bondman. Or, again, he might 
become the bondman of any one, outside his fine (his own rela- 
tives), who paid the eric for him. 

The eric for killing one of the bond-class was twenty-one cows. 
Forty-two cows was the eric for killing a freeman. This, how- 
ever, was only the standard when the homicide was one of the 

he was entitled, sat him down by the door of the dishonest or unjust one, and, 
while the sympathetic world looked on, and its indignation daily grew greater 
against the wronger who had forced the wronged to take this extreme course, the 
latter tasted of no food. In short it was a plain hunger-strike for compelling 
justice from the powerful. 

If he who was fasted upon, felt that he had not been unjust, that he was 
wrongly accused and exposed, by the hunger-striker at his door — or if, knowing 
that he was unjust, he wished to make the world believe otherwise, he in turn 
adopted the fast against his accuser. Naturally he who could longest hold out in 
suffering — which usually meant the man whose conscience supported and inspired 
him — won out 

In the ancient tale of the sons of O'Corra is an account of how Conal Dearg 
O'Connor and his wife fasted against the devil, that he might bless them with 
children — and succeeded. In the Book of Lismore is the account of three young 
clerics, who had pledged themselves to say between them a certain total of prayers, 
daily. One of them died, leaving a heavier task on the other two. Then a sec- 
ond died, leaving still greater task to the survivor — whereupon last of them — 
upon which he began fasting against God for the injustice of taking away the 
other two and leaving their burdens to him. Also, one of the Irish legends tells 
how Adam, in the Jordan, after he had been expelled from Paradise, and Eve in 
the Tigris, fast against God, to compel forgiveness; and request the beasts and 
the fishes to fast with them. 

There were a few special laws bearing upon the subject of debtor and creditor 
which are interesting to note in passing. 

One law justly provided that "no one must be oppressed when in difficulty." 

To those who had pledged personal ornaments for debt (as has been stated 
in a previous chapter), the pledged object had to be released on the occasion, 
and during the term, of any of the great Aonachs (fairs), which the debtor, like 
the people in general, was expected to attend. If the creditor neglected to release 
the ornaments on such occasion he was under liability to pay to the debtor a blush 
fine for the embarrassment incurred by the debtor in appearing before the gay and 
richly-decked crowds on festive occasions without his personal ornaments. 

Moreover, as general jubilee was proclaimed during the terra of the great fairs, 
it was the law that during such festive time the creditor must rid his mind of 
debt memories. A debtor could not be arrested, or annoyed, for debt at the 
Aonach. or going to, or coming from it 

Furthermore, the laws against debtors were suspended during the official 
period of grief following the death of the Primate of Armagh, or the Ard-Righ of 
Ireland. Both these grave occasions were the cause of proclaiming a twelve months' 
moratorium. On the death of the king of one of the provinces all debtors had a 
three months' exemption: and one month on the death of a chieftain of a tuath 
(territory). 



138 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

plain people. If a noble were guilty of killing he had to pay the 
ordinary eric plus a log-enach, or honour price, graduated in the 
scale according to his rank: the higher his rank the higher was the 
honour price which he had to add to the ordinary eric' 

The Senchus Mor established it that half a noble's log-enach 
was lost to him the first time he was found guilty of false judg- 
ment, false witness, fraudulent security, false information, false 
character-giving, bad stories, lying, criminal wounding, betrayal, 
or refusal of food. On commission of the third such offence he 
was deprived of his honour-price complete. 

In the old Irish laws then, the sword of Justice had ever two 
edges sharpened for punishing people of rank. From those to 
whom much was given, much was to be expected. The democracy 
of those laws was shown in dozens of other ways. The king carry- 
ing building material to his castle had the same and only the same 
claim for right of way as the miller carrying material to build his 
mill. The poorest man in the land could compel payment of a 
debt from a noble — could levy a distress upon the king himself, 
through the person of the king's steward. The man who stole the 
needle * of a poor embroidery woman was compelled to pay a far 
higher fine than the man who stole the queen's needle. 

One of the seven things forbidden by law was for a poor man 
to give service or rent to a noble who demanded an excess of 
either; while the noble was mulcted for making the unjust demand. 
The king himself was bound by law to do justice to his meanest 
subject: for the law, while enumerating and acknowledging his 
rights, very distinctly and definitely points out to him that he had 
duties also. "The king must not exact his rights," says the law, 
"by falsehood, nor by force, nor by despotic might. His fostering 
care must be perfect to all, both weak and strong." And this sacred 
regard for rigid justice is well exemplified in the judgment given 
(in the case of the killing of Patrick's charioteer) by Dubtach, 
King Laoghaire's Ollam, in the presence of the King and the court, 

^ The log-enach or honour price, not merely made for the democratic justice 
of the law, which recognised that the fine laid upon a poor man or an ignorant, 
did not suffice to punish a noble, or a learned man — ^but it likewise placed in the 
hands of the law another unique and powerful instrument for the punishing of 
men in high place. This power lay in the fact, which will at first seem strange, 
that if a man of rank (social or intellectual) was found guilty of a degrading 
act, his honour price — the extra fine he should pay for his misdeed — was thereby 
reduced : thereafter, he paid for his crimes the smaller fine of a man of lower 
rank. The dramatic justice of this usage is plain to us, when we consider that the 
reducing of his honour price had the moral effect of degrading him henceforth to 
lower rank. 

8 A needle then was a prized possession — value for a year-old calf. 



THE BREHON LAWS 139 

and of Patrick, when, unlike the degenerate courtiers of later days, 
he boldly proclaimed: 

"Let every one die who kills a human being; 
Even the king . . . 
Who inflicts red wounds intentionally." 

The king, too, was threatened with degradation by these im- 
partial laws. Four dignitaries who may be degraded are, "a false- 
judging king, a stumbling bishop, a fraudulent poet, and an un- 
worthy chieftain." One special privilege accorded the king, how- 
ever, was that only men of three specified ranks could reply to him 
at law; namely, a bishop, an ollam, and a pilgrim. 

Running through all the laws for all the ranks, impartiality 
was the salient characteristic. Always the Irish law expected most 
from those who had most received from God. The laws bearing 
upon ecclesiastics, again, well exemplify this. For instance, while 
there was a certain fine imposed upon laymen for neglecting to 
honour a summons to court, an ecclesiastic was fined double for 
the same offence. And, whereas, for certain offences, lay people 
of rank were deprived of half their honour-price the first time, and 
all their honour-price the third time, clerics for the very first offence 
were condemned not only to lose all their honour-price, but like- 
wise to be degraded. Pursuing stern justice still farther — while 
ordinary clerics could, by doing penance and suffering punishment, 
win back their grade, he of higher rank, the Bishop, not only lost 
his honour-price and was degraded for the first offence, but could 
never again regain his position. He must go out from the abodes 
of men and henceforth live a hermit.^ 

That the impartiality of the law persisted even toward its own 
professors is exemplified in the ordinance which discriminated 
against law advocates being paid a blush fine. Blush fines were 
payable for insults offered to all persons of all ranks, with a few 
notable exceptions. The ne'er-do-well, the squanderer, the idler, 
and the lazy man, could not claim blush-fine. Neither could the 
selfish, earthy one who thought only of his cows and his fields; the 
druth or the clown who distorted himself before crowds at a fair; 
the Cainte or Satirist who himself made a trade of insulting others, 
and, finally — the lawyer! "A man who is paid to abuse others," 
says the law, "is not entitled to claim damages when abused him- 
self." 

^ It may here be noted that, in the sight of the law, in the same rank with the 
bishop was the king, the chief poet, and the brugaid or public hospitaller: a like 
dire fine or eric was payable for the killing of either of the four. 



I40 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

For the Brehons who framed the laws showed no lenienq' to- 
ward their own order. '*Every judge," says the Book of Acaill, 
"is punishable for his neglect. He has to pay eric-fine for his false 
judgment." Another law, too, ordered that for false judgment 
he should be degraded. 

And the old law's fairness is again shown, and its chivalry, in 
the stipulation that every alien who came into the country to pur- 
sue a suit at law against a native, was entitled to his choice of the 
Brehons of Eirinn. And paralleling this was the ordinance that 
every outsider who came into any territory for purpose of suing a 
subject in that territory, had his choice of the Brehons of the ter- 
ritory. 

But, the thoughtful wisdom of the ancient law-makers is every- 
where exemplified. There were laws prescribed for the care of the 
poor, the aged and the sick — with detailed instructions in each case. 
For the sick, the doctor was bound to provide plentiful ventilation 
— so that, through open doors or windows, the patient could be 
seen from all four sides, by one outside the house. A running 
stream of fresh water must flow through his hospital. For neglect, 
or blunder, or mismanagement of an operation, the doctor was 
fined. If he failed, through ignorance, to effect a cure he could 
claim no fee. 

Knowing the exacting nature of those who depended upon the 
charity of others, this law thoughtfully provided that the official 
who looked after the poor should have no recourse at law against 
the abusiveness of those under his charge. He or his family could 
not claim blush-fine for insult hurled at him by the creatures whom 
he helped. 

Minute details are given of what must be provided for the de- 
pendent aged person; details of the house; the furnishings of the 
house; the supplies necessary; details of the old person's care — as 
for instance, how often he must be bathed, how often have his 
head washed, and so on. 

There is found in the Yellow Book of Lecan, and also in the 
Leabar Breac a curious Cain Domnach, Law of Sunday, which was 
said to have been brought over from Rome by St. Conall, a sixth- 
century Donegal saint. During the Sabbath, which in ancient Ire- 
land extended from sunset on Saturday to sunrise on Monday, the 
Cain Domnach forbids all labour outdoor or indoor. It forbids 
sweeping or cleaning the house, combing, shaving, clipping the hair 
or beard; it forbids games of all kinds, buying, selling, washing, 
bathing, cutting, sewing, churning, fishing, boating, grinding corn, 
cooking, splitting firewood, riding on horseback, journeying of 



THE BREHON LAWS 141 

travellers. Wherever the evening of Saturday descended on a 
traveller, there should he pause in his journey, and resume it only 
on Monday morning. 

In quitting the subject of the old laws, after this brief glimpse 
at a broad field, we may agree with Patrick when he indicated that 
even the Pagan law-givers were inspired by the Spirit. He con- 
sidered that they spoke, as he asked Dubtach, when giving judg- 
ment, to speak — "What God will give you for utterance, say it. 
It is not you that speak but the spirit of the Father which speaketh 
in you." 

Ginnell, Lawrence: The Brehon Laws. 

Joyce, P. W. : Social History of Ancient Ireland. 

Brehon Laws: the Ancient Laws of Ireland. 

Maine, Sir Henry: Dissertation*; on Ancient Law. 

Sullivan, W. K-, Ph.D.: Introduction to 0'Curr)''s Manners and Customs 

of the Ancient Irish. 
O'Curry, Eugene: Manuscript Materials of Irish History. 
Manners and Customs, 



CHAPTER XXI 



ST. BRIDGET 



For four centuries after the Bishop Patriclc, setting foot In the 
country, began scattering far and wide the seeds of the Gospel, the 
history of the Irish race hangs upon the history of the holy men 
and women, and the scholars, who continued Patrick's work, at 
home in Ireland and afar on the Continent of Europe. 

And by far the greatest woman in this work was Bridget. 

When Patrick rested from his labours it was on Bridget that 
the seeding sheet was bound. And over the hills and the dales of 
Ireland then went she, sowing the fruitful words of the new Master 
to whom Ireland had learnt to bow. And a worthy successor to 
Patrick Avas she — Bridget the beloved, Bridget of Eirinn, the Mary 
of the Gael! In the centre of the trinity of Irish patron saints 
Patrick, Bridget and Colm Cille, she stands, crowned, the spiritual 
queen of the race. And warmly and fondly as the memory of the 
other two great ones is treasured in the Irish heart, it is doubtful 
if their names evoke the deep, sweet and tender, overwhelming 
affection that is breathed with the name of Bridget,^ 

^ Oh, she was fair as a lily, 

And holy as she was fair, ' 

The Virgin Mary of Erin — 

Brigid of green Kildare. 
She came to earth when the snow drops 

Were starring the rain-drenched sod. 
The sweetest blossom among them. 

From the far-off gardens of God. 

O Brigid, so high and holy! 

So strong in womanly grace, 
Look down from the sills of heaven 

To-day on your olden race. 
'Tis over the world we're scattered, 

And vour land is a land of woe, 
But we re holding you as a lodestar, 

\Miatever the roads we go. 

For you are our pledge in heaven, 

With Padraig and Colm Cille, 
For the Faith by our foes unbroken, 

And the hopes that they could not still ; 
142 



ST. BRIDGET 143 

But not in Ireland alone is it a living thing, that intimate devo- 
tion to her, the woman patron saint of the Gael, but wherever they 
go and wherever they are they bear in their breast a little flame 
of the perpetual fire of Kildare. And devotion to her is as sweet 
and ardent among the simple islanders of Highland Scotland's 
fjords as it is in the Western Aran, or on the Currach of Kildare. 
The bare-footed maiden in Uist of Hebrides, driving the cows to 
pasture, still chants — but In melodious Gaelic: 

"The protection of God and Columba, 
Encompass your going and coming, 

And about you be the milk-maid of the smooth white palm, 
Bridget of the clustering hair, golden brown." 

Bridget was born just twenty years after the coming of Patrick, 
about the year 450, at Fochart, near Dundalk. She met and heard 
Patrick preach. According to an ancient tradition she slept a 
mystic sleep once, during his preaching at Clogher, and had a sym- 
bolic dream in which was shown her the future triumphs, and the 
future trials of the faith in Ireland. Another tradition has it that 
she aided in making his winding-sheet. 

It is the universal Irish claim upon Bridget which has called 
forth legends giving every quarter of Ireland a proprietary right 
upon the national treasure. So some traditions would have her 
born in the house of a Druid, at the court of the chieftain of Tir- 
Conaill, of a Munster father and Connaught mother, while her 
future home was to be Leinster. 

Bridget's mother appears to have been a bond-maid in the 
house of Bridget's father,^ Dubtach, who was of royal descent. 

For the surge of our prayers unceasing, 

For the depth of our love unpriced, 
For our agony in earth's garden, 

And our crucifixion with Qirist. 

And we cry to you, holy Brigid, 

'Tis you have the right to pray 
For us in the land of Erin, 

In the hour of our need to-day. 
We breathe your name as a symbol, 

Like the lamp on your altar set, 
That God is an unforgetting God, 

And will stand for our righting yet 
Yea, He who so long has tried us 

In the flame of His purging fire, 
Will give to the race of Brigid 

The crown of their souls* desire. 

— Teresa Brayton. 
2 Concubinage was, in ancient times, common in Ireland, as in almost all 
countries. 



144 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

tenth from King Feidlimid the Lawgiver. And the tradition goes 
that just before Bridget's birth, her mother* like Hagar, was, 
through the jealousy of the wife of Dubtach, driven forth upon 
the world. She was sold into the service of a Druid — in whose 
house Bridget was born, and in whose service she is said to have 
lived to free her mother. 

The Druid, when he had acquired the bond-maid and learnt 
the cause of her selling foretold to Dubtach: "The seed of thy 
wife shall serve the seed of the bond-maid, for the bond-maid will 
bring forth a daughter conspicuous, radiant, who will shine like a 
sun among the stars."^ 

3 As Bridget grew up she became both a shepherd and a dair^'-maid on the 
Druid's farm — a dairy-maid, sweet, gentle and beautiful, with a disposition that 
was perpetual sunshine in her clean white dairy, or in the woods with her sheep. 
In these days Bridget's heart went out to all living things, to God's beasts and 
birds as well as His mankind— on all which she lavished her love. And all in 
return loved her. God, too, sent His blessing upon her and her work. "Every- 
thing to which her hand was set," says the Book of Lismore, "used to increase. 
She tended the sheep; she satisfied the birds; she fed the poor." 

Bridget cared for the milk of twelve cows. And when she took the butter she 
made it into twelve equal parts and one large part, in memory of Christ and the 
apostles. And the large portion she gave to the poor and to the stranger — for 
she used to say, "Christ is in the person of every faithful guest." 

And one of the legends of the Book of Lismore tells how, once, the Druid 
and his wife learning that great quantities of their butter were being given away 
by the dairy-maid came to the dairy to see for themselves, and to demand from 
Bridget a hamper of butter for their own use. "Of butter, what has thou?" the 
Druid demanded. Now it happened that Bridget, because of her generosity, had 
only as much left as should come off one and one-half churning. Yet when her 
master and mistress demanded a full hamper, she cheerfully went into her dairy- 
kitchen, singing: 

"Oh, my Prince 

Who canst do all these things, 
Bless. O God, 
My kitchen with Thy right hand. 

"My kitchen 
The kitchen of the white God, 
A kitchen which my King hath blessed, 
A kitchen that hath butter. 

"Mary's Son, my Friend, cometh 
To bless my kitchen. 
The Prince of the world to the border, 
May we have abundance with Him." 

In and out she went chanting, and in and out continuously bearing with her 
from the kitchen, each time, the butter of half a churning till a large hamper was 
filled. And says the tale in the Book of Lismore, "If the hampers which the men 
of Munster possessed had been given her, she would fill them all." 

Astonished at the miracle and the miracle-worker, the Druid exclaimed : "Both 
the butter and the kine arc thine. Thou shouldst be serving not me but the Lord." 
"Take the kine," said Bridget, "and give me my mother's freedom." The Druid 
thereupon gave her both the kine and her mother's freedom. She gave the kine 
to the poor. The Druid and his wife were baptised, and were full of faith hence- 
forward. 



ST. BRIDGET 145 

When the maid, Bridget, a free woman, returned to her father's 
house, she was so singularly graceful and beautiful, that the 
fame of her spread far and near. Ardent wooers, in the person 
of champions, chieftains, young princes in numbers, came to 
woo her for wife. But she refused them all — for she had re- 
solved to be the bride of Christ. This her father did not like — 
much less her stepmother who became intensely jealous of 
her. But her father's objections increased, and her step- 
mother's dislike for Bridget multiplied many times, when they 
discovered that the luxurious excess for which their house 
had been famed, was melting away, by reason of Bridget's 
bestowing their substance upon the poor who crowded to 
her. 

At the instigation of his wife, Dubtach, for peace sake had to 
decide to put Bridget away, just as he had once put away her 
mother. So he took her with him in his chariot to the Palace of 
Dunlaing MacEnda, King of Leinster. "It is not for honour or 
reverence to thee thou art carried in a chariot," he said to her, as 
they went, "but to take thee to sell thee to grind the quern for Dun- 
laing MacEnda." 

When he reached Dunlaing's residence he left Bridget in the 
chariot while he went to see the King. But, so notorious had she 
become for her unstinted giving that he left with her in the chariot 
nothing which she might in his absence bestow on the poor — noth- 
ing but his sword. As, however, a leper, coming down the way, 
begged charity of her, and that she had nothing else to give him, 
she gave him her father's sword. 

When her father returned with Dunlaing MacEnda, and dis- 
covered what she had done, he was mightily provoked. He ap- 
pealed to the King saying: "Thou seest for thyself why I am 
forced to sell this daughter of mine." 

And Dunlaing said to her: "Neither can I take you into my 
house, for since it is thine own father's wealth that thou takest and 
givest away, much more wilt thou take my wealth, and my cattle, 
and give them to the poor." 

To which Bridget replied: "The Son of the Virgin knoweth 
that if I had thy might with all Leinster and all wealth, I would 
give them to the Lord of the elements." 

Then Dunlaing said to Dubtach: "It is not meet for us to 
deal with this maiden. Her merit before the Lord is higher than 
ours." 

And so was Bridget saved from a second slavery. 



146 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

She was veiled * with seven other virgins by Bishop Macaille 
whose church was in that part now called Kings County. And 
the inevitable legends that grew up around all of Ireland's be- 
loved record that, when she was taking her vows, in the wooden 
pillar of the altar-rail on which she rested her hand the sap circu- 
lated and the pillar became green, and bloomed again. 

She went into Connaught — where her piety and charity, her 
faith and her work, were such that she quickly became the most 
famous personage there. Her Leinster people, learning of her 
fame, sent to her, besought her to come home to them, and offered 
a habitation at Kildare to her and the great number of followers 
she had now gathered around her. Bridget accepted — and there 
then, she founded the Church of the Oak, and founded the Mon- 
astery of Kildare which was to be famous for all time. She 
founded also the little less famous school of Kildare. This was in 
the latter years of the fifth century. Her home in Kildare became 
a centre of religion and of learning, of piety and of lore, whose 
fame almost rivalled the fame of Patrick's See itself, at Armagh. 
Great were the crowds that resorted here, not only from all Lein- 
ster, but from every corner of Ireland. Crowds of poor came seek- 
ing material relief; crowds of the pious to satisfy their souls; 
crowds of students who thirsted for knowledge — all classes came — 
those in wealth and those in want; the humble and the haughty; 
learned and illiterate; chieftain and bondman, layman and eccle- 
siastic — all attracted by the piety and wisdom, the goodness and 
greatness, of the foremost woman of the Gael. 

Yet the humility of this noble woman remained such that often- 
times when the very greatest sought her, they found her not in the 
hall nor the church, but, though it might be blowing or snowing, 
off in the fields herding the cattle that gave milk to the monastery, 
or the sheep that gave them wool."^ 

* The Tripartite life of St. Patrick implies that in his day he consecrated nuns 
— that they even thronged to him from abroad. Nine daughters of the King of 
the Lombards, it says, came to Patrick, over the sea, and a daughter of the King 
of Britain. It is also said that he veiled the daughters of Laoghaire, the two prin- 
cesses. Ethni of the Golden Hair, and Fedelm the Ruddy. "Patrick put a white veil 
upon their heads, and having received the Body and Blood, they fell asleep in death. 
Patrick laid them side by side on the one mantle, and in the same bed." 

5 It was herding thus she was, when occurred the little incident that is related 
of Ninnid and herself. 

Ninnid from Loch Erne whose name as a saint was afterwards to be famed 
was then a little lad studying at the school of Kildare. On a morning when she 
sat herding her sheep on the currach, enveloped in a cloak that hid her identity, 
the little Ninnid came running past — probably in fear of being late for his class. 
The cloaked nun called out, asking him why he ran. "O nun," the ready-witted 
boy replied, "I am going to Heaven " "Well." said the nun, "won't you pause and 
make prayer with me that it may be easy for me to go?" "O nun," replied the 



ST. BRIDGET 147 

Once when Bishop Conlaeth (whom she had selected for the 
See of Kildare) preached to the sisterhood upon the Beatitudes 
she proposed to the nuns that each sister should take one of the 
Beatitudes as her special object of devotion, she herself character- 
istically choosing Mercy. 

In those days many Bishops were skilled in trades — ^which 

, were then considered noble and ennobling. Her bishop Conlaeth 

' was a fine artificer, skilled in doing beautiful work in metal. He 

\ is supposed to have taught decorative metal art in the school of 

, ,Kildare, which was a centre of that art. Here they turned out 

^ chalices, bells, patens and shrines, beautifully ornamented. The 

; art of working in metal was particularly prized in Ireland then: 

/ many devoted themselves to it and much tasteful work was pro- 

l duced. Of the multitude of presents that were given to Bridget 

^ and her monastery and her church by those who were constantly 

thronging there, it is recorded that the queen of Crimthann, the son 

of Enna Ceannselach, gave to Bridget a silver chain of which the 

Book of Lismore says: "The semblance of a human shape was 

on one of the ends thereof, and an apple of silver at the other 

end." ^ 

Bridget made many journeys through the south and west of 
Ireland, consulting, counselling and directing the spiritual leaders, 
spreading the faith wheresoever she went, and inspiring great num- 
bers to devote themselves to the service of Christ. And where- 
soever she was, at home or abroad, crowds of people were con- 
stantly thronging to this wonderful woman. The rich came with 
gifts, the poor came for help; the sick came for healing. She is 
recorded to have worked many miracles by the power of her sur- 
passing faith — a faith so powerful that it is related that a woman 
consumptive who touched her shadow was instantly healed. The 
belief of the people in her power begot many legends — one of these 
telling us that she was once seen to hang her wet cloak, for drying, 
on a ray of sunshine.* 

hurrying boy, "I cannot, for the gates of Heaven open now, and if I delay they 
may be shut against me." But she insisted, "Pray to the Lord with me that it may 
be easy for me to go, and I'll pray to the Lord with you that it may be easy for 
you to go — and to bring thousands." 

Ninnid, thus persuaded, knelt down with Bridget and prayed. And it was 
ordained that this lad would help to smooth her way to Heaven — he was to give 
her, at her passing away, the last rites. 

And it was this praying of Bridget's on the currach with the little scholar, 
Ninnid, that constituted her the natron of students. 

° Of an old blind sister, Dara, whose sight she had restored, it is told that she 
begged to be darkened again — 

Yet she said, my sister, 
Blind me once again, 



148 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Cogitosus, a monk of Kildare, who in the eighth century wrote 
the life of Bridget says, "Uncountable were the numbers who 
flocked to her: the sick for healing; and the rich with gifts." 

This was not by any means the first life of Bridget written. 
Bishop Ultan of Ardbreccain, who is frequently styled a brother 
of Bridget's, collected the virtues and miracles of Bridget, and 
commanded his disciple Brogan to put them into poetry.^ 

A wonderful description of Bridget's Church at Kildare is 
given by Cogitosus which is evidently imaginary of that day, but 
which Dr. Petrie (in his "Round Towers") affirms was real for 
Cogitosus' own day. Cogitosus says that in that church in Kildare 
"repose the bodies of Bishop Conlaeth and his holy virgin, Bridget, 
on the right and left of the decorated altar, deposited in monu- 
ments adorned with various embellishments of gold and silver 
gems and precious stones, with crowns of gold and silver depend- 
ing from above, elevated to a menacing height and adorned with 
painted pictures . . . one partition decorated and painted with fig- 
ures and covered with linen hangings." 

Bridget, it is said, took the Blessed Mother, Mary, as her 
model. "She was following the manners and the life," says one 
account, "which the Holy Mother of Jesus had." "It was this 
Bridget, too," says O'Clery's Martyrology, "that did not take her 
mind or her attention from the Lord for the space of one hour at 
any time, but was constantly mentioning Him, and ever constantly 
thinking of Him. She was hospitable and charitable, and humble, 
and attended to herding sheep and early rising." 

Lest His presence in me 
Groweth less plain. 
Stars and dawn and sunset 
Keep till Paradise, 
Here His face sufficeth 
For my sightless eyes. 

Oh, she said, my sister, 

Night is beautiful 

Where His face is showing 

Who was mocked as fool. 

More than star or meteor, 

More than moon or sun, 

Is the thorn-crowned forehead 

Of the Holy One. 

— Katherine Tynan Hinkson. 
"^ Ultan, however, could not have been her kin-brother, for his death is recorded 
only in the year 656, when he died of the great plague — during which he had been 
father to the flocks of orphans which that plague, the buidhe-Chonaill, made in 
Eirinn. O'Gery's Martyrolog>' says "Ultan of Ardbreccain used to feed with his 
own hands every child who had no support in Eirinn — so that he often had fifty 
and thrice fifty with him together." 



ST. BRIDGET 149 

Bridget made Kildare truly great. The old annalists who made 
a point of recording the names of abbots of monasteries, but not 
abbesses, always, however made exception to their rule in the case 
of the abbesses of Kildare. And because of the priority that 
Bridget's greatness gave it, Kildare's abbess came to be looked 
up to by all the nuns of Ireland, just as the Primate of Armagh 
was looked up to by all the clerics. 

In her day, because of her power, she ruled the monks of Kil- 
dare as well as the nuns. Before she died it was said that as many 
as thirty religious houses were under her obedience. It is recorded 
that for nearly a thousand years her name was honoured, and her 
feast was celebrated, in every Cathedral Church from Grisons to 
the German Sea. As many as thirty Continental cities are quoted 
for their devotion, in the middle ages, to Irish Bridget. 

Four years after the birth of Colm Cille, Bridget died — in 525 
— leaving Ireland in mourning. And they mourned for Bridget 
as they had never mourned for any, high or low, simple or gentle 
— with the possible exception of Patrick. And in the one tomb 
with Patrick at Down, was interred Ireland's greatest woman, Ire- 
land's Bridget, the Mary of the Gael. 

"It was she who never turned her attention from the Lord for 
one hour, but was constantly meditating and thinking of Him in her 
heart and mind, as is evident in her own li^e and in that of St. 
Brendan, Bishop of Cluain-Ferta. She spent her time diligently 
serving the Lord, performing wonders and miracles, healing every 
disease and malady, until she resigned her spirit to heaven on the 
first day of the month of February, and her body was interred at 
Dun, in the same tomb with St. Patrick, with honour and veneration." 

And the Book of Lismore: 

"For, everything Bridget asked, the Lord granted at once. For 
this was her desire: to satisfy the poor; to expel every hardship; to 
relieve every misery. Now never hath there been any one more 
bashful, modest, gentle, humble, more sage, more harmonious than 
Bridget. She was abstinent, innocent, praj'erful, patient, glad in 
God's commandments, firm, humble, forgiving, loving. She was a 
consecrated casket for holding Christ's Body and Blood, She was 
a temple of God. She was simple toward God ; compassionate to- 
ward the wretched ; she was splendid in miracles and marvels ; where- 
fore her name among created things is like unto a dove among the 
birds, a vine among trees, the sun among stars. 

"She is the prophetess of Christ: She is the Queen of the South. 
She is the Mary of the Gael." 



150 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Stokes, Whitley, D.C.L., LL.D.: Lives of the Saints from the Book of 

Lismore. 
Healy, The Most Rev. Jno., D.D., LL.D., Archbishop of Tuam: Ireland's | 

Ancient Schools and Scholars. 
Lannigan, Rev. John, D.D. : Ecclesiastical History of Ireland. 
Joyce, P. W. : Social History of Ancient Ireland. 
Reeves, The Rev. Wm., D.D. : The Martyrology of Donegal ("O'Clery's 

Col,"), a Calendar of the Saints of Erin. (Edited by Dr. Reeves and 

Dr. Todd conjointly.) 
O'Hanlon, The Rev. Jno., Canon: Lives of the Irish Saints. 



CHAPTER XXII 

WOMEN IN ANCIENT IRELAND 

The fact that In such remote time as the fifth century a woman 
could command the respect, the reverence, and moral obedience 
which were so fully and freely rendered to Bridget will naturally 
surprise the many who reflect that in most countries it is only a few 
centuries since women came out of semi-bondage. 

But, in Ireland, from the remotest time of which we have any 
record, historical or legendary, woman stood emancipated, and 
was oftentimes eligible for the professions, and for rank and fame. 
In the dimmest, most ancient legends, casual references to druid- 
esses, poetesses, women physicians and women sages, prove that 
in the very remote days in which these legends were created, there 
was nothing uncommon or surprising in women filling these posi- 
tions. In one of the oldest, if not the oldest, of all invocations in 
Irish legendary lore, the invocation of Amergin, son of Milesius, 
praying to the gods for the safe landing of their company against 
which the Tuatha De Danann were raising magic storms, he says : 
"Let the learned wives of Breas and Buaigne pray that we may 
reach the noble woman, great Eirinn." 

The ancient Irish had a goddess, Bridget, who represented 
poetry and wisdom — and, as before mentioned, they had a mortal 
Bridget who was a famous lawgiver — whose laws and sayings were 
instanced, and her decisions followed as precedents, by her learned 
successors, well down into historical times. She was either wife 
or daughter of S^nchan, the 011am of Ulster, at Conor Mac- 
Nessa's court. 

Woman was then nearly on an equality with man. Particu- 
larly great women compelled the admission of this equality, and 
sometimes of superiority, too. Still, the man-made laws took care 
to throw the weight of authority in the scale with the so-called 
lord of Creation. Although the Crith Gablach, in discussing the 
privileges of a man of the noble classes, lays down the dictum, "To 
his wife belongs the right to be consulted on every subject," and 
although before a Brehon's court the husband and wife stood on 

151 



152 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

equal terms, still the law held that the man had headship in the 
marriage union. Then, however, it proceeds to safeguard the 
rights of the wife. For it says that though he had headship of 
the two, he did not own her. "It is only contract that is between 
them," says the law. 

Again, insisting on the man's superior privileges the old com- 
mentator on the Senchus Mor, while admitting that the laws therein 
were equally for the women as well as for the men, goes on to ex- 
plain why It is entitled the Senchus of the Alen of Eirinn. "It is 
proper, indeed," he says, "that it should be so called, so as to give 
superiority to the noble sex, that Is to the male, for the man is the 
head of the woman. Man Is more noble than the woman." 

This is the hard, dry lawyer of it. The poet of that day was 
very far from agreeing with the lawyer on this point, though it 
must be admitted that while the poet proved the fair sex nobler 
than the other, he generously did so in spite of the fact that in 
common with the less visionary part of mankind, he still believed 
her to be the sole cause of man's downfall — as witnesseth this an- 
cient Irish poem, Eve's Lament.^ 

That It was not considered unwise to open the schools to women 
is shown by a hundred references In the old records. It will be re- 
membered that Patrick, when he came to the palace of Cruachan 
found there the two princesses, Fedelm and Eithne, King Lao- 

^ From Kuno Meyer's "Ancient Irish Poetry." 

"I am Eve, great Adam's wife, 
'Tis I that outraged Jesus of old ; 
'Tis I that robbed my children of Heaven, 
By right 'tis I that should have gone upon the cross. 

"I had a kingly house to please, 
Grievous the evil choice that disgraced me, 
Grievous the wicked advice that withered me ! 
Alas ! my hand is not pure. 

" 'Tis I that plucked the apple. 
Which went across my gullet: 
So long as they endure in the light of day, 
So long women will not cease from folly. 

"There would be no ice in any place. 
There would be no glistening windy winter, 
There would be no hell, there would be no sorrow, 
There would be no fear, if it were not for me." 



WOMEN IN ANCIENT IRELAND 153 

ghaire's daughters, under the tuition of Mai and Coplait. We 
hear of the delg-graif, the writing style, of the mother of King 
Brandubh, in the sixth century. When, in the sixth century also, 
St. Brendan the Navigator, after he had mastered the canons of 
the old law and the New Testament was about to set out to the 
school of Jarlath at Tuam to add to his store of lore that of the 
rules of the saints of Ireland, his foster-mother Ita, the Book of 
Lismore tells us, warned him: "Study not with women, nor with 
virgins, lest some one revile thee." And St. Ita herself was a 
teacher of girls. When St. Mugint went over and founded a 
school in Scotland in the seventh century, we are given to under- 
stand that girls studied there as well as boys. At the school of St. 
Finian at Clonard, in the sixth century, women attended. For we 
learn incidentally that when the daughter of the King of Cualann 
came to it, to learn to read her psalms, Finian put the girl in the 
companionship of his favourite pupil, Ciaran, with whom she read 
them. As it was in the Latin that the Bible was read at those 
schools it follows that some women even studied the classics then. 

Under date A. D. 932, the Annals of the Four Masters chron- 
icle the death of Uallach, the daughter of Muinnechan, the chief 
poetess of Ireland — one of many Irish poetesses. Famous female 
rulers and famous mothers and wives of male rulers, such as Taillte 
and Tea and Macha — and fine warriors, too, like Medb — are en- 
shrined in the accounts of the ancient seanachies. 

Of course it is not for a moment to be understood that in early 
Ireland the education of woman was of the same importance as 
that of man — very far from^ it. The instances are given only for 
purpose of showing that women were not excluded from the privi- 
leges of education, nor was there any prejudice against their ac- 
quiring the learning of the schools. In the various centuries and 
in the various generations some of the more ambitious of them 
sought and obtained such an education, at least from the days of 
Patrick downward. And through all the centuries some of them 
acquired fame in this, just as they did in other lines of what is con- 
sidered man's endeavour. There is, in the old Book of Ballymote 
a sort of history in prose and verse of Eirinn's famous women 
down to the time of the English Invasion. 

By reason of their equality or near equality with man In other 
realms, women warriors frequently felt it their duty to take up 
arms and march into battle with their brothers or husbands. It 
was only in 697 that they were exempted from warfare — by the 
influence of St. Adamnan at the Synod of Tara in that year. The 
law that exempted them Is known as the Cain Adamnan. The 



154 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Feilire of Aongus describes how Adamnan was moved by his 
mother to fight for this exemption, "It came to pass that Adamnan 
once travelling in Magh Breagh with his mother on his back saw 
two battalions smiting each other. It happened, moreover, that 
Ronait (his mother) saw a woman with an iron sickle," so bar- 
barously tearing to pieces one of her own sex that she, Ronait, laid 
it on Adamnan to rest not until he had obtained the passing of a 
law that would prevent such savagery among women forever after. 
In Ireland, after marriage, the woman did not become a chattel 
— thus radically differing from the usual custom in the other coun- 
tries of Europe. Before marriage she was wooed and courted 
like the superior being which, later, she was acknowledged to be 
in all countries. In the exercise of the acknowledged privileges of 
a superior being she could scorn and frown down the attentions of 
chieftains and kings — and scholars, too — send them home with 
hanging heads, and choose whomsoever her heart went out to. 
And after marriage she was not — as unfortunately was too gener- 
ally the case elsewhere — the property of her husband. "It was 
contract that was between them." In the eyes of the law, they 
were partners in a matrimonial venture — with the husband, how- 
ever, the leading partner. And so very far in the lead was the 
Irish law that under it the wife could remain sole owner of prop- 
erty that had been her own before marriage. Also, such property 
as was jointly owned by them could not be sold or signed away by 
the husband. Their rights in the joint property were equal; and 
the voluntary consent of both was necessary for its disposal. This 
is a remarkable acknowledgment of the equality of the women of 
Ireland with the men in the remotest days — above all, an equality 
persisting after marriage, when, down to very recent days, even in 
highly advanced countries, all such rights were insured to the hus- 
band. 

A married woman retained the right, too, in her own person 
to pursue a case at law, and in her own person to recover for debt. 
In this connection it may be mentioned that when a woman levied 
upon the goods of a debtor, she distrained such things as were ap- 
propriate for women; such animals, for instance, as lap-dogs or 
sheep; such articles as spindles, mirrors, or comb-bags. 

Because of the primary importance of military duty, and the 
necessity of having men liable therefor — in ancient Ireland, as In 
all ancient countries, the man had the preference over the woman 
in the inheriting of land. If there was a son he inherited the land 
in preference to a daughter — who, however, got coibche, marriage 
portion, out of the general estate. The daughter, however, In- 



; 



WOMEN IN ANCIENT IRELAND 155 

herited the land if there was no son. But by virtue of her getting 
the land she had to provide and pay a warrior when a military 
levy was made. It is said that it was the famous law-wise Brigid 
Brethra, Brigid of the Judgments, who, about the time of Christ, 
gave the legal decision which granted this right to women. 

A woman's coibche, tinnscra, or tochra,- as the marriage por- 
tion was variously called, took the form of gold or silver, animals, 
clothes or household articles. But the term coibche, although often- 
times used for dowry, was more properly the price which the bride- 
groom paid to the father of the bride, or to the bride herself — 
after the marriage had been consummated. The very old laws 
laid it down that the coibche should be paid in yearly instalments, 
the whole of the first year's instalment going to the bride's father, 
two-thirds of the second year's to him, one-half of the third year's, 
and on decreasingly. To the wife went the remainder. 

There was another payment at marriage, called tinol, a collec- 
tive gift made by the friends to the lanamai?i (young couple). In 
this tinol the man had two-thirds right and the woman one-third. 

Whether she did or did not bring anything else, however, the 
wife practically always brought into the marriage contract her own 
articles of industry, her distaff, spinning wheel, spindle, loom, etc. 
In the few cases in which she did not bring these, she had a con- 
siderably lower legal standing in the partnership. 

There were certain cases of legal separation — for legal separa- 
tion for good cause then existed — in which it was adjudged the 
right of the wife to take with her all of the marriage portion and 
the marriage gifts, and an amount over and above that for dam- 
ages. 

The old laws as well as the old stories everywhere testify that 
Irish women of ancient days devoted much attention to dress, 
toilet and the general care and adornment of the person. The 
finger-nails received much attention; and well-kept finger-nails sig- 
nified that their possessor was a person of taste. The nails of the 
women of leisure were dyed crimson. The eye-brows also were 
dyed, usually black — with berry juice. A vegetable dye was some- 
times used to tint the face. But the care of the hair was the most 
elaborate of all — and this applied to men (who then wore their 
hair long) as well as to women. Much time and attention were 
bestowed upon the hair's combing and dressing. The oldest illu- 
minated manuscripts reflect this. It was beautifully curled in spiral 
curls, both in front and hanging down to either side. It was 

2 Hence the Scottish "tocher." 



156 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

braided down the back, and confined at the end with golden rings, 
or with light, hollow, golden balls. Women's hair was sometimes, 
however, bound up, and held in position by golden rings. There 
were beautiful combs of bone or horn, which were carried in cior- 
bolgs (comb-bags). The bath was regularly indulged in — by the 
men as well as the women. The Fenians bathed every evening be- 
fore they toolc their great meal. It was considered a shameful 
breach of hospitality if a bath was not at once prepared for the 
traveller and the stranger in the house that he honoured by his 
presence. 

Gloves and veils were worn by the fine ladies. Maidens went 
with their heads uncovered; but married women wore on their heads 
either a hood, or a roll of linen, folded around several times. 
Their dress of woollen, linen, silk or satin, was oftentimes a single 
garment falling to the ankles, and consisting sometimes of as much 
as thirty yards of stuff, tastefully gathered in many and deep folds. 
And over this dress was worn out of doors a long cloak. 

Many of their ancient ornaments and their beautiful toilet ar- 
ticles are still preserved. Very beautifully wrought brooches of 
silver, and gold, and bronze; great pins for the hair and pins for 
the cloak; leathern handbags, with embossed patterns for carrying 
their personal ornaments; veils and gloves; beautiful combs; mir- 
rors, too, called scadarcs ; may be seen in the museum of the Royal 
Irish Academy and in the National Museum. They had scented 
oils for toilet use. They had furs also — skins of the otter, seal 
and badger. 

Chivah-ous respect for women, both the married and the un- 
married, was a characteristic feature of Irish life in all ages. And 
the natural chivalry of true men it was that was shown to them, not 
at all the artificial thing which in later days and in other countries 
was the base counterfeit substituted for the real thing. True 
courtesy, respect and honour were accorded the women, every time 
and everywhere. Most ancient accounts of the most ancient revels 
show that the women were seldom permitted to be present. They 
had their own part of the house, where they talked and worked, 
played and sang, while the men revelled. The account of the Fair 
of Carmen shows that the women there had a place apart, where 
they could meet and commingle, and which the law of the Fair for- 
bade men to enter. In the chief residences and palaces, always, the 
women had their own special wing of the house exclusively re- 
served for them. It was known as the Grianan, signifying the 
sunny part. 

An apparent exception to the rule that women were excused 



WOMEN IN ANCIENT IRELAND 157 

from the revel, occurs in the well-known very ancient account of 
the feast of Bricriu, where the women are made to play a part 
which is popularly supposed to be characteristic of woman's nature 
— and which shows that womanly rivalry in those far-away days 
was the same human quality that it is in the world to-day. 

Bricriu's feast was not a common revel. It was a great feast 
of almost national importance, the preparations for which occu- 
pied a whole year and which was attended by all the great ones of 
Ulster. The satirist and cynic, Bricriu of the Poison Tongue, who 
was the host of this wonderful feast, seeking to indulge his malev- 
olence by creating dissension among the bright heroes of the prov- 
ince, attained his end by artfully playing upon the natural vanity 
of their beautiful wives. Cuchullain's wife, Emer the Discreet, 
Conal Cearnach's wife, Lendabair the Fair, and Laoghaire Bua- 
dach's wife, Fedelm the Ever-blooming, he made his unwitting tools. 

For this feast there was specially built by Bricriu a magnificent 
house which "excelled in material and art, beauty and gracefulness, 
in pillars and walls, and variety, and in porticoes and doors, all the 
houses of the time." 

Fergus MacRiogh, knowing well the evil Bricriu, wisely tried 
to dissuade the Ulster champions from going to this feast — "Be- 
cause," he said, "if we should go, our dead would be more numer- 
ous than our living." 

But they went — to their black sorrow. When they were assem- 
bled Bricriu took well-planned opportunity to speak privately in 
the ear of each of these beautiful ladies, impressing on her with all 
the insinuating power of a poet, that she was by far the most beau- 
tiful, lustrous, the greatest and first, of the women of Ulster, just 
as her husband was the greatest and noblest man and champion. 

"Well done this night, thou wife of Laoghaire Buadach. It is 
no nick-name to call thee Fedelm the Ever'blooming, because of the 
excellence of thy shape, and because of thy intelligence, and because 
of thy family. Conchobar, the king of the chief province of Eirinn, 
is thy father, and Laoghaire Buadach thy husband. Now I would 
not think it too much for thee that none of the women of Ulster 
should come before thee into the banqueting house; but that it 
should be after thy heels that the whole band of the women of 
Ulster should come (and I say to thee that) if it be thou that shalt 
be the first to enter the house this night, thou shalt be queen over 
all the other women of Ulster." 

In like manner did he whisper to each of them. When the ser- 
pent, Bricriu, whispered in the pleased ear of these fair ladies, 



158 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

each of them, accompanied by her fifty attendants, was strolling out 
to take the air, upon the lawn of Bricriu's magnificent house. And 
as he had told each of them that when they were returning the 
first v/oman to enter the hall of the festivities should be queen of 
the whole province, we can easily conjecture that the return was 
exciting — 

"The three women moved on then till they reached the same 
place, that is, three ridges from the house; and none of them knew 
that the other had been spoken to by Bricrind. They returned to 
the house then. They passed over the first ridge with a quiet, grace- 
ful, dignified carriage; hardly did any one of them put one foot be- 
yond another. In the second ridge their steps were closer and 
quicker. On the ridge nearest to the house each woman sought to 
forcibly take the lead of her companions ; and they even took up their 
dresses to the calves of their legs, vieing with each other who should 
enter the house first; because what Bricrind said to each, unknouTi- 
to the others, was that she who should first enter the house should be 
queen of the whole province. And such was the noise they made 
in their contest to enter the kingly house, that it was like the tusU 
of fifty chariots arriving there; so that they shook the whole kingly 
house, and the champions started up for their arms, each striking nis 
face against the other throughout the house." 

The fine virtues and accomplishments which went to the mak- 
ing of a perfect woman in ancient Ireland, were well exemplified 
in this Emer, wife of Cuchullain, one of the most famed women in 
ancient Irish story. "The six maidenly gifts of Emer" faithfully 
reflect for us what was the popular conception then of a desirable 
maiden. They were: "Beauty of person, beauty of voice, the gift 
of music, knowledge of embroidery, knowledge of needle-work, and 
the gift of wisdom and virtuous chastity." 

And when we are first introduced to Emer, we find her at 
needlework in the midst of a group of maidens likewise engaged, 
outside the Dun of her father Forgaill. It is when Cuchullain 
arrives to pay her court. She is shown shy, demure, and self-deny- 
ing, hesitant about permitting herself to be wooed, and endeavour- 
ing to pass the coveted honour to her elder sister. Such is the poet's 
reflection of the popular conception of maidenly modesty, and 
maidenly excellence, in the far-away time. 

Yet for all their maidenly modesty and true womanliness, the 
women of ancient Ireland were sensible of the fact that they were 
man's equal, and where necessary could insist upon equal treatment. 
A very fine instance of this is the case related in the Book of Lis- 



WOMEN IN ANCIENT IRELAND 159 

more of Canair the Pious. She was a holy maiden of the Benn- 
traighe who lived the life of a holy hermit there, in the days when 
Saint Senan, having his monastery and school on Inis-Cathaig, for- 
bade any woman to come upon the island. The Book says that 
Canair, praying after nocturne one night, saw as in a vision all 
the churches of Ireland sending up towers of fire to Heaven. But 
the greatest of the great fire towers went up from Inis-Cathaig. 
"Fair is yon cell !" exclaimed Canair. "Thither will I go that my 
resurrection may be near it." But Senan, meeting her on her ar- 
rival on his shore, commanded her: "Go to thy sister on yon 
island east, for guesting. No woman shall enter here." To which 
the indignant Canair, fired for her sex and their rights, answered : 
"How canst thou say that? Christ is no worse than thou. Christ 
came to redeem women, no less than men. No less did He suffer 
for sake of women. Women have given service and tendance unto 
Christ and His apostles. No less than men do women enter the 
heavenly kingdom. Why then shouldst thou not take women to 
thee in thine island?" 

And this able pleader won over the Saint, and for once shat- 
tered his rigid rule. 

It was this respect for women, permeating society in every age 
in Ireland, that gave such moral fibre to the Irish race as enabled 
it not only to persist through later long and fearful centuries of 
oppression unparalleled, under which other races would have dis- 
appeared — not only to persist through these terrors, but to come 
out of them still morally stronger than almost any other of the most 
favoured peoples of Europe. God and Bridget blessed the race 
that blessed the name of Woman. 

Sullivan, W. K., Ph.D.: Introduction to O'Curry's Manners and Customs. 
Joyce, P. W, : Social History of Ancient Ireland. 
Henderson, Geo., M.A., Ph.D. : Fled Bricrend, the Feast of Bricriu. 
O'Curry, Eugene: Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish. 

Manuscript Materials of Irish History. 

Brehon Laws: the Ancient Laws of Ireland. 



CHAPTER XXIII 



COLM CILLE 



Among native Irish saints Colm Cille (Columba) divides the hon- 
ours with Bridget in the affections of the Irish people — divides the 
honours for greatness also, some say. But when we consider the 
works he performed, the monasteries he founded, tlie power he 
wielded over princes and provinces, the veneration he compelled 
from three countries, and the Christian reclamation of which he 
was the direct cause, added to the powerful personality of the man, 
which holds him as a living presence in Ireland and Scotland more 
than thirteen centuries after the green sod of Hy was drawn over 
him, we recognise that he was without a peer among native Irish 
saints — and had only one peer — which is to say, Patrick — among 
all the saints of Western Europe. And in Northern Ireland and 
Western Scotland he has outranked Patrick himself in the power 
he has wielded over the imagination of the people. With Patrick 
and Bridget, Colm Cille also is one of the great personages of the 
universal Church. 

Colm Cille was of Irish royal stock, very close in the line of 
succession to the kingship of Tir-Conaill, and the high-kingship of 
Ireland. Indeed one of his historians says: "He had the natural 
right to the kingship of Ireland, and it would have been offered 
him had he not put it from him for God's sake." He was a de- 
scendant in the third degree from Conal Gulban, the founder of 
the principality of Tir-Conaill, and consequently in the fourth de- 
gree from Niall of the Nine Hostages. He was born a nephew of 
the then reigning High-king, Muircertach MacErca. And a High- 
king who reigned later in Colm's career, Ainmire, was his cousin. 
His father, Feidlimid, was chieftain of the particular territory of 
Tir-Conaill, in which he was born. And his mother, Eithne, was 
daughter of a Munster chief, of the line of Cathair Mor. It was 
only in a time when, as then, the fires of Christianity glowed at 
white heat, that a man of such, and so many, royal entanglements 
could turn his back upon wealth, rank and power, and give himself 
to God. 

160 



GOLM CILLE i6i 

Colm is said to have been baptised Crimthann, when he was 
born at Gartan (Donegal) in the year 521. Some think it was in 
his days of study under St. Finian of Moville (in Down) that, 
from this gentle boy's haunting the church in the hours between 
study-times his fellow-pupils gave him the name of Colm Cille, 
Dove of the Church. 

He was fostered and tutored in his earlier days by a priest 
pamed Cruithnechan, at the place which is now called Temple 
Douglas — only a few miles from his birthplace. He went to three 
or four other schools later, for his higher education — to the school 
of St. Finian of Moville, as mentioned, where he is said to have 
been made deacon; later to the other and greater St. Finian, of 
Clonard, to study divine wisdom. There he was a fellow-pupil to 
a band of youths who were to be, with him, among Ireland's great- 
est. He was one of that band of Finian's pupils who came to be 
Icnown as the Twelve Apostles of Eirinn. 

For Colm, Finian had a great liking — took that liking the first 
day that the youth from Tir-Conaill appeared at his school. For 
he asked the lad to erect his hut at the door of the church. Finian 
had a mystic dream later regarding Colm and his other favourite, 
Ciaran of Clonmacnois. It appeared to him that there arose in 
the sky a moon of gold from the horizon in the northeast, and a 
moon of silver over the midlands. The latter lighted the whole 
centre of Ireland; but the former, the golden moon, lit up all Erin 
and Alba, and the whole western world, with its brilliance and 
radiance.^ 

Colm returned home to Tir-Conaill in 544 because of the 
Buidhe Chonaill, the dreadful pestilence that swept Ireland several 
times in those centuries — and which at this particular time, broke 
up and scattered the great schools, sending the pupils in drifts to 
homes oversea, as well as to homes in Eirinn — and which now car- 
ried off several of the leading teachers, and some of the leading 
saints of Ireland, including the famous saint and scholar, Ciaran, 
the founder of Clonmacnois. 

It is generally agreed ^ that Colm was ordained to the priest- 

* Either before or after his career at Qonard he attended in Leinster the 
bardic school of one Garman, where he is supposed to have had his well-known 
poetic talents developed, and his poetic training perfected. Finally, he is believed 
by some to have been studyijig at St. Mobi's school at Glasnevin with Comgall 
and Cainnech as his companions. Lanigan, however, denies that he was at St. 
Mobi's schooL And indeed the only proof on which it rests is the tradition of 
himself and his fellow-pupils, on the night of a storm, on which the River Tolka 
was swollen, swimming the river rather than miss vespers at the church on the 
opposite bank. 

2 Lannigan denies this also. 



i62 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

hood while at Clonard. It throws an interesting light on the char- 
acter of the ecclesiastics in early Christian Ireland, several of 
whom we know, by authentic record, to have been artisans, to learn 
that when the boy sought out Bishop Etchen for his ordination, 
he found him ploughing his field. 

He was about twenty-four or twenty-five years of age when he 
returned home from school. His close kinsman, the Prince of Tir- 
Conaill, gave him a grant of land, a hill of oaks near where the 
river Foyle debouches into the Loch of the same name — where he 
founded his famous monastery of Derry. As a love for all of 
God's living things was a marked characteristic of almost all the 
early Irish saints, we find Colm, when erecting his monastery here, 
breaking a precedent, that was not only honoured but blest, by re- 
fusing to build his church with its chancel towards the east — be- 
cause he was thereby able to spare the life of many oak-trees.^ 

His next foundation, after Derry, was the monastery of Dur- 
row (in the present Kings County) — founded seven or eight years 
later. His missionary activity now became extraordinary. He 
was travelling east and west, preaching, exhorting, organising com- 
munities, founding monasteries. He founded Kells, Swords, Drum- 
colum, Drumcliff, Screen, Kilglass and Drumhome, and many, many 
more. In all he is said to have founded thirty monasteries in 
Northern Ireland — before yet he was exiled, which event occurred 
in 562, when he was forty-two years of age. 

His exile, the greatest, saddest event of his life, for which 
calamity through all his years after he never ceased to grieve, was 
yet fraught with seeds of happy blessing for the neighbouring coun- 
tries to which he and his disciples were to bear the tidings of Christ. 
The reason of Colm's exile, the terriblest sentence that could be 

3 After he left Derry and left Ireland we find him in his beautifully pathetic 
lament for exile telling how the angels crowded every leaf of the oaks of 
Derry, listening to the monks chanting the psalms, both at midnight and 
at morn. For, through the beautiful years that he spent there building up the 
community, and making the monastery a temple of the living God, the holy man's 
heart sent down its roots deep into Derry hill. His soul was sorely pained at 
parting from his many monasteries, but it got a most woful wrench when he had 
to tear his heart's roots from among the roots of the oak wherewith they had 
mingled on his beloved Derry hill. 

"The reason that I love Derry is, 
For its peace, for its purity, 
And for its crowds of white angels, 
♦ From one end to the other. 

"O Derry, my own little grove, 
My dwelling, my dear little cell! 
O Eternal God in Heaven above. 
Woe be to him who violates it T 



COLM CILLE 163 

pronounced against one of the most passionate patriots that Eirinn 
ever produced, is alleged to have been a penance for causing the 
great battle of Cuildremne (in Sligo) where a host of lives were 
lost. And the causes of his instigating this battle are popularly 
supposed to be two: because the Ard-Righ, Diarmuid O'CarroU, 
in the first place adjudged a case against him — unfairly, as Colm 
believed; and because, furthermore, Diarmuid violated monastic 
sanctuary and carried away and punished with death a homicide 
who had taken sanctuary with the saint. 

The case adjudged against him affected a copy of the Psalms 
which he, Colm, had made surreptitiously from the book of his mas- 
ter, Finian of Moville. When Finian discovered that his pupil had 
made and carried off a copy he claimed its return as stolen prop- 
erty. The case was laid before the High King, Diarmuid, who, 
after hearing argument on both sides, delivered the sententious 
judgment which was popularised ever after in Ireland, "Le gach 
boin a boinin" — to every cow her calf — a verdict which, as it would 
make the copy Finian's, Colm hotly resented and rejected.* 

After this Cuildremne slaughter (in 561) the impetuous Colm 
gave way to remorse that bit into his soul. His biographer, Adam- 
nan, says there was a synod held at Taillte shortly after, where a 
motion was made to excommunicate Colm, for his crime — which 
would have been carried but that his bosom friend, Brendan of 
Birr, held out against the other members and saved Colm. But 
his own soul was punishing him. He finally went to St. Molaise— 
of Devenish, as some say, or St. Molaise of Inishmurry, others 
say — humbly confessed his crime and asked to be penanced. 

For such a great crime the penance must be great. Knowing 
the intense love that possessed Colm for his native land, Molaise 
ordered that he should go forth from his country and behold it 
never more. Also he should bring to Christ as many souls as there 

•*The violation of sanctuary occurred when Curan, son of King Aed of Con- 
naught, a hostage at Tara, had, at a game of caman, struck and killed the son of 
the High-King's steward, and had then taken refuge with Colm. King Diarmuid 
commanded that the young prince should be taken forcibly from Colm and put to 
death — which was done. For this unforgiveable outrage against traditional sanc- 
tuary, Colm, eluding a guard that had been put over him, quitted Diarmuid's 
domain, and made his way over the mountains to his home in Tir-Conaill. His 
kinsmen, the princes of Tir-ConaiU and Tir-Eogain, took up his quarrel, and 
joining their army to that of Aed, King of Connaught, father of the prince who 
had been put to death, met Diarmuid and his forces at Cuildremne, fought and 
defeated him, with terrible slaughter — three thousand dead, some say, being left 
on the field. 

The battle of Cuildremne was not the only one for which the impetuous Colm 
was responsible. Other contentions of his had caused the battles of Coleraine 
wherein his people fought the Dal .'\raide, and the battle of Culfeda in which they 
fought Coleman, the son of Diarmuid. 



i64 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

had been lives lost at Cuildremne. Sad-hearted for the sore sen- 
tence that had been meted out to him — but resolute — Colm, taking 
with him twelve companions, among whom were his uncle, Ernaan, 
and his cousin, Baoithin, sailed away from the land which his heart 
loved so fondly, and which now must nevermore be his. 

"Alas for the voyage, O High King of Heaven, 
Enjoined upon me, 
For that I on the red plain of bloody Cooldrevin 
Have sinned against Thee, 



"Three things I am leaving behind me, the very 
Most dear that I know, 
Tir-Leidach I'm leaving, and Durrow and Derry. 
Alas, I must gol 

"Yet my visit and feasting with Comgall have eased mc 
At Cainnech's right hand: 
And all but thy government, Eire, had pleased me, 
Thou waterfall land !" ' 

Into a bay on the island of Oronsay in the southern Hebrides 
they ran their boat, on an evening. Next morning Colm, climbing 

" It was a grievously sorrowful leave-taking of Ireland was Colm's, as, looking 
back from his boat, his moistened sight embraced the beloved hills that, afar, 
were sinking forever from view. In his Lament for Erin, one of the several beau- 
tiful poems credited to the poet Colm, he says: 

"There is a grey eye "Melodious are Erin's clerics, melo- 

That will lcx)k back upon Erin : dious her birds, 

Which shall never see again Gentle her youths, wise her elders, 

The men of Erin nor her women. Illustrious her men, famous to be- 

hold. 
Illustrious her women for fond 
"I stretch my glance across the brine espousa . 

From the firm °al,en planks ; ..^ ^^ . ^.^ ^ ^^ 

Many are the tears of my bright soft West 

grey eye ^j heart is broken in my breast: 

As I look back upon Erin. ^^^^^^ ^^^^^^ ^^^^^ overtake me. 

It is for my great love of the Gael. 

"My mind is upon Erin, "Were all Alba mine 

Upon Loch Lene, upon Linny, From its centre to its border. 

Upon the land where Ulstermen are, I would rather have the site of a 
Upon gentle Munster and upon house 

Meath. In the middle of fair Derry. 

"Beloved are Durrow and Derry 
Beloved is Raphoe with purity, 
Beloved Drumhome with its sweet acorns, 
Beloved are Swords and Kells !" 



COLM CILLE 1 6s 

a high hill to look toward the land where he had left his heart, 
beheld, on the horizon's verge, low and dim, that land for which 
his soul so sorely grieved. Here he must not stay I 

"To oars again, we can not stay, 
For ah, on ocean's rim, I see 
Where sunbeams pierce the cloudy day, i 
From these rude hills of Oronsay, 
The Isle so dear to me!" 

The sad company had to take to their boat again, and spread 
their sail to catch a wind that would drive them farther from 
Eirinn. 

Their next landing was their final one. It was on lona.^ And 
on that quiet evening on which the keel of their boat grated on the 
pebbled shore of this quiet isle, to the world unknown till now. 
Fame with its thousand wings encircled it and marked it for its 
own. 

lona was part of the Scotic Dal Riada, colonised and ruled by 
the Scots (Irish). King Conal, who now reigned there, was of the 
Tir-Chonaill family, Colm's own kinsman. And to the exile he 
made a grant of land whereon the holy man founded a home for 
his monks, where he was to found his monastery, and where he 
was to build his school, and from whence he and his disciples were 
to carry Christ, first to the untutored Picts, and later to the Britons 
and the Saxons of the south. 

Starting here with a small number of brothers, and small and 
poor shelter, they drew to them from Ireland recruits in great num- 
bers, whom the fame of Colm, his power and his piety, perennially 
attracted. Their buildings grew, their farms spread, their flocks 
increased. They bore the Gospel tidings to King Brude and to 
his Pictish hordes in the uttermost corners of Scotland. Their 
school, too, attained great fame, and attracted students from all 
these island countries.^ 

^ Called also Hy, and I-Colmcille. 

^ From time to time also to lona came to visit Colm his brother-saints from 
Ireland, famous men of that day — the two Brendans, the two Finans, Flannan, 
Ronan, Comgall, Finbar, all are said to have visited the exile, bringing dearly 
loved Eirinn to him who to Eirinn could not return. Many others, too, abbots of 
various Irish monasteries came there, like these, to seek the counsel and advice 
of one whose counsel was prized beyond that of any other Irishman of that day. 
Among them, the wandering abbot Cormac Ua Liathain, who, forced from Colm's 
monastery of Durrow, because he was a Munsterman presiding over Northerns 
who nagged him. was seeking a deserted isle where he might end his days alone 
with God. And for leaving that land which of all earth's lands was the most 
delightful, most joyous, from which no man in his sanity could voluntarily exile 



i66 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Yet, despite the penance which seemed to forbid it, was he 
destined to tread Eirinn's hallowed soil again. The romantic, dra- 
matic return to his land of him who had been solemnly forbidden 
ever to see that land again, is one of the outstanding incidents of 
a life filled with big incidents. He was to return to Eirinn to the 
famous Convention of Drimceatt — return, too, without literally 
transgressing against the penitential ordinance. And this was the 
reason of his return. 

The poets of Eirinn — of which brotherhood Colm was a proud 
member — had now not only multiplied so largely, but also had 
become so satirical, so overbearing, and so exacting, that the no- 
bles of the land loudly murmured, because of the burden these 
people had become. Wandering over the island as they did, sur- 
rounded by their hungry bands of attendants, seating themselves 
down in what court they pleased, commanding whatever their 
erratic minds fancied, remaining as long as they pleased, exacting 
what they wished, and leaving when they would, it was little won- 
der that people began to groan under the intolerable burden. But 
this state of evil came to a head when at length one of them 
went so far as to demand, in tribute to his poetic powers, the royal 
brooch, a rarely beautiful heirloom, of the Ard-Righ — who was 
now Aedh, the son of Aimmirc. The restraint which even a High 
King had imposed upon himself in deference to poetic genius and 
sacred tradition, was burst by such brazenness. He swore that the 
island should be cleared of the poet tribe. To pass a decree for 
this purpose which should be legal, he called a convention of the 
princes and nobles, scholars and ecclesiastics of the land, to meet 

himself, the home-sick Colm, with affectionate upbraiding, upbraids the errant 
Cormac. "For," Colm tells him, "I pledge thee my uneering word, which may 
not be impugned, that better is death in reproachless Eirinn than life forever in 
Alba." 

And his pining heart which dwells forever upon happy memories of his 
native land, paints for the hapless wanderer such alluring picture of that pleasant 
Durrow which he madly quitted as should swiftly bring him back to reason, and 
draw him there again: "How happy the son of Dimma (i.e., Cormac) of the 
devout church, when he hears in Durrow the desire of his mind — the fingers of the 
wind playing upon the elm-trees, the black-birds' joyous note when he claps his 
wings; the lowing of the cattle at early dawn in Ros Grencha; the cooing of the 
cuckoo from the tree, on the brink of summer." 

Even to a sea-gull visitor which comes flying toward lona from Eirinn, in 
the west, he addresses a poetic appeal full of affectionate envy for that it saw 
Ireland so recently, and can see it when it will again. For, this passionate love 
and longing for the country of his nativity, the intense love and longing which 
endowed the cold flag of Gartan, that had been his bed, with the virtue of averting 
home-sickness, persisted in the saint's soul through all his days in Hebridean exile. 

On Colm's flag (his stone bed) at Gartan, down to most recent days, poor 
Donegal boys on the eve of their starting for America, Australia, or other far 
exile, would pass a night — to obtain the great Exile's blessing, which should avert 
from them the home-sickness which had racked his heart. 



COLM CILLE 167 

at Drimceatt — near the present town of Limavada in Derry. 

When the sad news reached him on lona, Colm, alarmed for 
his soul-brethren, the poets, knew that some extraordinary meas- 
ure was immediately necessary to save Ireland from a shame which 
in the eyes of all noble ones, should stain its honour down the 
ages. His heart was alarmed and his soul was fired for the in- 
justice about to be done his brethren, the poets. Well he knew that 
they had grown arrogant and unjust: but no crime whatsoever on 
the part of a class so justly privileged should draw upon Ireland 
the sacrilege of their driving out. Despite his penance, he re- 
solved that he should appear in person at Drimceatt to avert from 
Ireland a dire disaster. 

As the words of his penance had been that he should never 
again see Ireland, he, blind-folded, sailed for Ireland, attended by 
several bishops, fifty priests, fifty deacons and thirty clerics. 

"O Son of my God, what a pride, what a pleasure 

To plough the blue sea! 
The waves of the fountain of deluge to measure, 
Dear Erin, to thee. 

'*We are rounding Moy-n-Olurg, we sweep by its head, and 
We plunge through Lough Foyle, 
Whose swans could enchant with their music the dead, and 
Make pleasure of toil." 

What a dramatic sensation must there have been when in 
among the assembled nobles and scholars and kings of the nation, 
was led at the head of his company, this blinded man whose name 
was a name of wonder in every household in Eirinn, extraor- 
dinarily cherished in most, extraordinarily feared in some. What 
commotion must have been there; what craning of necks; what 
straining of eyes; what stamping of feet; what rattling of spears! 
What a fierce hurrah must have torn from the throat of the Conal- 
lach and the Eoganach, and from the men of many a sympathetic 
clan! And what troubled thought must have shown in the curled 
brow, what burning resentment looked out of the eye, what dour 
silence sat upon the lips, and what burning memories consumed the 
breasts of a hostile minority there 1^ 

' For there were some who as fiercely resented Colm's presence at Drimceatt 
as others ardently rejoiced in it. The wife of Ard-Righ Aed, a bitter opponent 
of this strong man, had commanded her two sons, Conal the elder, and Donal the 
younger, on no account to take part in the welcome which the Convention would 
surely extend to Colm, and to refrain from showing him any respect whatsoever. 
Conal not only obeyed his mother, but some say went so far as to insult, if not 



i68 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

And when this blinded man began to speak, beseeching the men 
of Eirinn to save their famed and loved land from the indelible 
stain of sacrilegiously violating the most sacred, most ancient tradi- 
tion, the sanctity of the poet's person, to save it from banishing 
forever from Eirinn those great and noble, learned and gifted 
ones, whose tongues, touched with divine fire, had in their slightest 
word the fearful power of making the name of Eirinn famous or 
infamous — how he must have swayed and shook his audience as 
the hurricane from the north shakes the fir-trees of the forest — 
made them tower with pride, and cower with shame, lashed them 
and soothed them, roused them and melted them, elevated and 
prostrated them, now to the highest heavens, and now to earth's 
dust — how he must have lifted them beyond themselves, and how 
made them the abject creatures of his will and slightest word — 
till he had only to say go and they would go; do this and it was 
done ! Colm completely routed all hostility, carried the Conven- 
tion, and saved the great order of his brother-bards from extinction 
in Eirinn.^ 

assault, Colm and his companions. The younger lad, Donal, however, moved by 
instinctive respect and love for such a great and holy man, arose up on Colm's 
entrance, went forward and embraced him, and kissed him on either check — in 
reward for which generous impulse he was blessed by, as his elder brother was 
deprived of, the succession to the throne. 

^ The Convention decided that they should not expel the bards, but it was at 
the same time agreed that the order should be completely reformed. A new 
set of laws and rules for the order was then drawn up. The High King of Eirinn 
was to maintain his own special 011am of poetry; and each petty king and each 
chieftain to maintain a file also ; but the numbers of their pupils and of their 
attendants were reduced so that they would he less of an imposition to those who 
extended to them hospitality. Fees for their compositions were fixed, beyond which 
they could not exact in future. A tract of land was to be set apart for each 
011am, free of all payments. Every member of the order was entitled to universal 
freedom and sanctuary from the men of Ireland, in their land, person, and worldly 
goods. To make them useful to the state and to give employment and the means 
of living to that large portion of them which would otherwise go idle, it was 
arranged that public schools should be opened wherein they would become instruc- 
tors and where, in the words of Keating, "any of the men of Ireland could get 
free instruction in the sciences." 

"The educational establishments now endowed," says O'Curry, "were national, 
literary colleges, quite distinct from the great literary and ecclesiastical schools 
and colleges, that had formed themselves around individual celebrities, and were 
then in operation." 

The carrying out of the new order of things was put in the hands of the 
celebrated blind poet, Eochaid Righ Eigeas, better knov.'n as Dalian Forgaill, the 
Ard-Ollam and King-Poet of Ireland — whose dust now mingles with the earth 
of the Island of Inis Caoil, in the west of Donegal. This was the poet who com- 
posed the poem (still extant), the Anna Colm Cille, by way of reward to the 
Saint for saving the bards. 

In a eulogy written upon this Dalian, after his death, by his great successor 
Senchan Torpeist, is said : 

"The ocean's caverns, which armies dare not — 
The mighty cataract of the great Eas Ruadh ; — 



COLM CILLE 169 

Another most important matter with which the Convention of 
Drimceatt concerned itself was the dispute between Aidan, the 
King of the Irish colony in Alba, that is the Scottish Dal Riada, 
and Ireland's Ard-Righ, as to where the allegiance of the Irish Dal 
Riada (the northeast of Antrim) was due. As the people of the 
two Dal Riadas were of the same clan, Aidan claimed kingship 
over both. But Aed, High King of Ireland, held that the tribute 
and the military support of the Irish Dal Riada were due to Tara." 

The convention agreed to leave the decision of this case to 
Colm, who was equally concerned on both sides. Colm, however, 
dechned to be judge in the matter, and referred it to St. Colman, 
the son of Comgallen, who decided that the Irish Dal Riada should 
be directly and entirely subject to the Ard-Righ of Ireland, paying 
him tribute and supplying him with military levies, but they should 
be allies of their brethren over the Channel, the Scottish Dal Riada, 
and in case of a war of theirs against the Picts, or the Britons, 
should supply them with a fleet. 

The Convention of Drimceatt is said to have remained In ses- 
sion for a year, making laws, redressing grievances, adjusting dis- 
putes. Colm, however, quitted it when that in which he was in- 
terested was finished with. He spent some months in Ireland, 
however, visiting several of his foundations, sojourning for some 
time with one and another of them, settling their affairs, counselling 
and directing, and leaving them treading the path that he wished 
them to go. After which he returned to his beloved charge In the 
Western Islands again, and resumed his arduous duties, working, 
teaching, preaching, writing, travelling and baptising the heathen 
into the faith. He wrote much, chiefly copying the Scriptures. 
And on occasion he set down a poem or a hymn of his own com- 
posing. Several such, still existing, are attributed to Colm." 

The rolling wave of a spring-tide's flow, — 
Were the meet images of Dalian's intellect. 

Until the shining sun is surmounted, 

Which God has created above all creation, 
No poet from north to south shall surpass 
Eochaidh, the serene royal poet. 

He was sage, O God of Heaven ! 
He was a noble and a chief poet ; 
Until the wave of death swept placidly over him, 
Uch 1 he was beautiful, he was beloved." 

^° There are different versions of this dispute, but this is Lanigan's view of it. 

^^ In the Liber Hymnorum, an ancient Irish Book of Hymns saved from 
oblivion, there are three Latin poems which the general body of authorities believe 
to be truly Colm's. The most noted of them is the Altus Prosator, a Latin poem 
of the Abecedaria class ; that is the twenty-two first letters of the twenty-two 



170 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

As one of Colm's characteristic qualities was his indomitable, 
never-tiring energy, he believed in all around him being energetic 
— and insisted on it. One of the rules which he established in his 
monasteries, and a rule that became proverbially associated with 
lona was that the day should be divided into three parts, one part 
for good works, one part for prayer, and one part for reading — 
the good works to be either for a brother's own benefit, for the 
benefit of his brethren, or for the benefit of his neighbours. His 
dictum was, "Let not a single hour pass in which you do not devote 
yourself to prayer, reading, writing or some other useful work." 
The copying of the Scriptures occupied much of the writing time 
of the brothers; and the copying of the classics for the use of their 
schools occupied a marked portion of their time. For, the classical 
education of their students was in this, as in all Irish schools at 
that time, an important part of the school's curriculum. And by 
practical example Colm firmly instilled his favourite precept about 
work, just as by practical example also he instilled all other of 
the good monastic precepts. He prayed and he worked whole- 
heartedly. He went out in the fields with the brothers, and In 
storm or shine toiled as one of themselves. He devoted much in- 
door time to copying of the Scriptures and other writings. He 
chastened himself by marvellous fasting. His bed was on the bare 
ground, with a stone for his pillow; sparing himself not, and 
spending himself ever, as well for his own benefit as for his fol- 
lowers' encouragement. 

The spiritual humility of this impetuous, fierce, strong, domi- 
nant man is well shown in the anecdote recorded in O'Clery's Mar- 
tyrology, under the anniversary of Baithen (Colm's cousin) : 

stanzas form the alphabet — following in this case the order of the Hebrew letters. 
Colm is said to have written it in Derry. He sent it to Pope Gregory the Great 
in return for valuable presents brought to him by messengers from that Pope. 

The celebrated Book of Kells, one of the most beautiful of all ancient books 
in the world, was said by some authorities to have been written by him. An 
entry in it asks for "a remembrance of the scribe, Columba, who wrote this 
evangel, in the space of twelve days." And those who say that the Book of Kells 
is our Colm's conclude that this evangel was the stolen copy from Finian's book 
which changed the current of Colm's life. But most authorities deny to Colm 
the transcription of the Book of Kells. The fact that it was written by a Columba 
does not advance the proof in the great Colm's favour, for there were innumerable 
holy men and saints of that name. Archbishop Healy holding that the Book of 
Kells is a genuine work of Colm Glle, also says that the Book of Durrow Is his. 
However, the proofs advanced by the upholders of Colm's authorship of these 
books is far from being conclusive. 

Original matters attributed to him include the Lament for Erin, his Farewell 
to Aran, the Dialogue of Colm with Cormac in Hy, and the poem he is alleged 
to have written as he took his lonely way homeward over the mountain, when 
fleeing from the court of Diarmuid MacCarrolL 



COLM CILLE 171 

"It was this Baithen who was permitted to see three grand chairs 
in Heaven, empty, awaiting some of the saints of Eirinn : namely, a 
chair of gold, a chair of silver, and a chair of glass. And he told 
Colm of the vision. And Colm answered him: 'The gold chair is 
prepared for Ciaran, the son of the carpenter, in reward for his sanc- 
tity, hospitality, and charity. The silver chair is thine own, Baithen, 
for the brightness and the fervency of thy piety. The glass chair is 
mine, for I am brittle and fragile, in consequence of the battles which 
I have provoked.' It was after this that he resolved on abstinence 
from food, except nettle pottage, without dripping or fat, so that 
soon the impression of his ribs through the woollen tunic that he 
w"ore, was to be seen on the sandy beach where for penance he used 
to lie at night" 

Yet like other great men he had not only clear vision of the 
great work which he was accomplishing, but also a child-like pride 
and child-like frankness in telling of it — beautifully expressed when 
in the course of another talk — this time upon the day of General 
Judgment — with his cousin and soul-friend, Baithen, he said: 
"Great also shall be my following on that day, Baithen, for its 
forefront shall be in Clonmacnois, and its rear in Dun Cuillinn In 
Alba."^^ 

Adamnan's personal description of him has preserved for us a 
physical picture of the man: 

"Colm was a man of well-formed and powerful frame, his face 
broad and fair and valiant, lit by large grey luminous eyes; he had a 
large and well-shaped head crovimed with close and curling hair — 
except where he wore his frontal tonsure. His voice was clear and 
resonant, so that it could be heard a distance of fifteen hundred 
paces, yet was sweet with more than the sweetness of the bards." 

Colm was by no means a young man when he appeared at the 

^2 The genial humour, which emphasised the Irish character of this Irishman 
is well exemplified in a story of him and his friend, St. Mochua, set down by 
Keating. Mochua lived a hermit in the wilderness devoting himself to the service 
of God — his sole worldly wealth a cock, a mouse and a fly. The cock called him 
t© prayers at a certain hour in the night. The mouse was to scratch his ear if 
sleep deafened him to the call of the cock. The fly made itself a pointer for him 
upon his psalter. It crept along the page under each line and each word of the line 
that he chanted. And when he ceased chanting, to attend to other business, the 
fly paused upon the word on which he had stopped, thus pointing the place for him 
when he returned again. The cock and the mouse and the fly at length died on 
him. He wrote to Colm, in lona, lamenting his loss. And Colm replied to him: 
"Brother, thou must accept in the right spirit the affliction that has been sent upon 
thee. Thou shouldst have known that worry always follows in the wake of 
wealth." 



172 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Convention of Drimceatt, in 575. But he lived and worked, in- 
spired countless other workers, and was a big power in two coun- 
tries for almost quarter of a century after. 

In was in 597 that death came to him. In May of that year 
he visited the farm where the brothers toiled, in the west of the 
Island. He went among the brothers, spoke affectionately with 
them and consolingly, told the sorely grieved ones that his days 
were now numbered, and he should depart from them within a 
month. He blessed them, blessed their work and blessed the island. 
When saying Mass, some time after, an angel appeared to him 
to warn him that the days were now few till his passing. On Sat- 
urday of that week he visited the great barn in which was stored 
the community's stock of food, and rejoiced in the great store he 
found there, which would insure plenty for his beloved ones for 
that year. With exceeding earnestness he blessed the barn, that 
it should ever hold and give in plenty to the ardent servants of God. 
Then he said to those who stood around him: "This day in the 
Holy Scriptures is called Sabbath, which means rest. And this day 
is indeed Sabbath to me, for it is the last day of my laborious life, 
and on it I rest. And this night at midnight I shall go the way of 
my fathers." 

As he wended his way slowly back from the barn, he talked 
consolingly to his faithful attendant, Diarmuid, who was weeping. 
Half way to the monastery he had to sit to rest by the wayside. 
And when he had thus sat down an old white horse which for long 
years had been used to carry the milk from the milking ground to 
the monastery, approached, thrust his grey face into the saint's 
bosom, while tears, as if from a human being, rolled from his eyes. 
The saint would not let the horse be driven away. He was deeply 
moved by the affection of the prescient animal, which he caressed 
and soothed. 

The hill called Cnoc-na-Carnan, which arose above the mon- 
astery, he then ascended and took a last long look over land and 
sea — and we may be sure a fond, fond look toward the western 
horizon below which lay the land of his heart. From this hilltop 
he blessed all that his soul cherished. And uplifting his hands, he 
blessed his monastery saying: "Small and mean though this place 
is, yet it shall be held in great honour, not only by Scotic kings and 
people, but also by the rulers of foreign and barbarous nations, 
and by their subjects; the saints also even of other churches shall 
regard it with no common reverence." 

It is characteristic of this man who so firmly believed in work 
and preached work, that when, now within a few hours of his 



COLM CILLE 173 

death, he returned to the monastery, he sat him down in his cell, 
and continued the transcription of the Psalter which he had been 
copying. At the end of the day, when it came time for the Sabbath 
vigils, having reached the end of a page, he laid down his pen, say- 
ing: "Let Baithen write the rest." And his last written words 
were those of the thirty-third psalm — "They that seek the Lord 
shall want no manner of thing that is good." 

So that the first words which his successor in the abbacy, Bai- 
then, was to write were : "Come, ye children, and barken unto me. 
I will teach you the fear of the Lord." 

Colm's last hours could not be more finely described than in 
the words of his biographer and kinsman, his tenth successor in 
the abbacy, Adamnan ; " 

"Having written the aforementioned verse at the end of the page, 
the saint went to the church, to the nocturnal vigils of the Lord's 
Day; and so soon as this was over, he returned to his chamber and 
spent the remainder of the night on his bed, where he had a bare 
flag for his couch, and for his pillow a stone, which stands to this 
day as a kind of monument beside his grave. While then he was 
reclining there, he gave his last instructions to the brethren, sa3'ing: 
'These, O my children, are the last words I address to you — that ye 
be at peace, and have unfeigned charitj' among yourselves: and if 
you thus follow the example of the holy fathers, God the comforter 
of the good, will be your Helper, and I, abiding with Him, shall 
intercede for you ; and He will not only give you sufficient to supply 

^5 Colm's life was also written by a distinguished one of his own clan, Manus 
O'Donnell, chieftain of Tir-Conaill in the sixteenth century. But his most dis- 
tinguished biographer and most successful was St. Adamnan, who was born in 
Tir-Hugh, in Southwestern Donegal a quarter of a century after Colm's death. 
Adamnan became abbot of lona in the last quarter of the seventh century. His 
"Life of Colm," one of several works written by this able writer, is described by the 
Scottish historian, Pinkerton, as "the most complete piece of biography which all 
Europe can boast of, not only at so early a period, but even through the middle 
ages." And Montalernbert says of it, "It forms one of the most living, authentic 
and vital relics of Christian history." 

Of this Adamnan, O'Clery, in his Martyrology, relates the legend how once 
when he was three days and three nights in the church alone, praying to God, and 
that messengers from the monks were sent to find what kept their abbot from 
them, they, peering into the church, saw "a little Boy with brilliance and bright 
radiance in the bosom of Adamnan. Adamnan was thanking and caressing the 
Infant. And they were not able to look at Him any longer, by reason of the divine 
rays around the Boy." 

Adamnan was once sent as an ambassador from lona to England to request 
the return of Irish captives who had been carried away in one of many raids 
which the Britons and Saxons made into Ireland in these centuries. Keating says, 
"The Northern Saxons gave Adamnan great honor, and everything he wanted." 

"He was a vessel of wisdom," says the Martyrology, of Adamnan, "and a 
man full of the grace of God, and with the knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, and 
of every other wisdom; a burning lamp to illumine and enlighten the West of 
Europe 



174 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

the wants af this present life, but will also bestow on you the good 
and eternal rewards which are laid up for those that keep His com- 
mandments.' Thus far have the last words of our venerable patron, 
as he was about to leave this weary pilgrimage for his Heavenly 
country, been preserved for recital in our brief narrative. After 
these words, as the happy hour of his departure gradually approached, 
the saint became silent. Then as soon as the bell tolled at midnight, 
he rose hastily, and went to the church; and running more quickly 
than the rest, he entered it alone, and knelt down in prayer beside 
the altar. At the same moment his attendant, Diarmuid, who more 
slowly followed him, saw from a distance that the whole interior of 
the church was filled with a heavenly light in the direction of the 
saint. And as he drew near to the door, the same light he had seen 
and which was also seen by a few more of the brethren standing 
at a distance, quickly disappeared. Diarmuid, therefore, entering 
the church, cried out in a mournful voice, 'Where art thou, father?* 
and feeling his way in the darkness, as the brethren had not yet 
brought in the lights, he found the saint lying before the altar; and 
raising him up a little, he sat down beside him, and laid his holy 
head on his bosom. Meanwhile the rest of the monks ran in hastily 
in a body with their lights, and beholding their dying father, burst 
into lamentations. And the saint, as we have been told by some 
who were present, even before his soul departed, opened his eyes and 
looked around him from side to side, with a countenance full of 
wonderful joy and gladness, no doubt seeing holy angels coming to 
meet him. Diarmuid then raised the holy right hand of the saint 
that he might bless his assembled monks. And the venerable father 
himself moved his hand at the same time, as well as he was able — 
that as he could not in words, while his soul was departing, he might 
at least, by the motion of his hand, be seen to bless his brethren. 
And having given them his holy benediction in this way, he immedi- 
ately breathed his last. After his soul had left the tabernacle of 
the body, his face still continued ruddy, and brightened in a won- 
derful way by his vision of the angels, and that to such a degree that 
he had the appearance not so much of one dead, as of one alive and 
sleeping. Meanwhile the whole church resounded with loud lamenta- 
tions of grief." 

After matins the bereft monks bore the body of their beloved 
father back to the monastery, chanting psalms. And mourned not 
only by his monks but by a great multitude of sorrowing Islanders 
and their chiefs, this singularly great man was laid under the earth, 
in the humble little cemetery of lona. 

Little wonder it is that signs on the earth and in the heavens 
should accompany the passing of one so great, whose greatness im- 



COLM CILLE 175 

pressed many lands." "And this unusual favour hath been conferred 
by God on this same man of blessed memory; that though he lived 
in this small and remote island of the British sea, his name hath 
not only become illustrious throughout the whole of our own Scotia 
(Ireland), and Britain the largest island of the whole world, but 
hath reached even unto triangular Spain, and into Gaul, and to 
Italy which lieth beyond the Pennine Alps; and also to the city of 
Rome itself, the head of all cities. This great and honourable 
celebrity, amongst other marks of divine favour, is known to have 
been conferred on this same saint by God who loveth those who 
love Him, and raiseth them to immense honour by glorifying more 
and more those that magnify and truly praise Him, who is blessed 
forever more. Amen." 

Lannigan, Rev. John, D.D. : Ecclesiastical History <Sf Ireland. 

Reeves, The Rev. Wm., D.D. : Adamnan's Life of St, Columba. 

Healy, The Most Rev. Jno., D.D., LL.D., Archbishop of Tuam : Ireland's 

Ancient Schools and Scholars. 
Keating's History of Ireland. 
Montalembert : Monks of the West 

O'Hanlon, The Rev. Jno., Canon: Lives of the Irish Saints. 
Stokes, The Rev. Dr. Geo. T. : Ireland and the Celtic Church. 

1* As might be expected, in his own beloved Ireland at the time of his passing 
strange signs were seen in the skies. Various holy men were witnesses of symbolic 
phenomena. Ernan of Drumhome — which it will be remembered was one of 
Colm's foundations — fishing in the River Finn, beheld the white vault of heaven lit 
up. He looked to the east and saw an immense clear fire, which seemed to 
illumine the whole earth, like the sun at noon. A pillar of fire ascended from 
earth to heaven and then disappeared. The strange sight was also witnessed by 
many other fishers who were fishing in the Finn with Ernan. 

Lugaid, the son of Tailchann, had a beautiful vision at Rosnarca at the same 
time. 

"In the middle of this last night," says Lugaid, "Columba, the pillar of many 
churches, passed to the Lord ; and at the moment of his blessed departure, I saw in 
the spirit the whole Ionian Island, where I never was in the body, resplendent with 
the brightness of the angels ; and the whole heavens above it, up to the very zenith, 
were illumined with the brilliant light of the same heavenly messengers, who 
descended in countless numbers to bear away his holy soul. At the same moment, 
also, I heard the loud hymns and entrancingly sweet canticles of the angel host, 
as his soul was borne aloft amidst the ascending choirs of angels." 



CHAPTER XXIV 



THE POETS 



Ireland was the poets' land in earliest days as well as in latest. 

In very early times Greece and Rome, only, excelled Ireland 
as nurturers of poets and nursing grounds of poetry. 

From the most remote antiquity of which we have legendary 
record, the poet was one of the greatest, most honoured, in the 
land. In social rank he held next place to the king — and at table 
he was entitled to the king's joint, the haunch. But in sacredness 
of person, the king usually held next place to the poet. The lives 
of kings were frequently taken, but seldom occurred the sacrilegious 
killing of a poet. 

When Fachtna Finn (who was Chief Poet of Ulster away be- 
fore the Christian Era) learned that the Ulster chiefs plotted to 
slay at a feast their tw'O kings, Congal Clairnach and Fergus Mac- 
Leide, he saved both their lives by seating each between poets. 
The assassins then had to stay their murderous hands lest the poets 
should be accidentally slain or injured. In the very rare instances 
in which such disaster befell the land, the whole nation mourned 
the calamity, and the sacrileg'ous scoundrel, who had been guilty 
of the appalling crime, was shunned by man, cursed by God and 
punished, moreover, with imm.ortal obloquy. 

When Cuain O'Lochain, chief poet of Erin, was, in 1024, put 
to death by the people of Teffia, the Annals of Clonmacnois re- 
cords — "after committing of which there grew an evil scent and 
odour off the party that killed him, that he was easily known among 
the rest of the land." And the Annals of Loch Ce, continuing the 
after history of the sacrilegious ones who had hand in the poet's 
death, says: "God manifestly wrought a poet's power upon the 
parties who killed him, for they were put to a cruel death, and 
their bodies putrefied, until worms and vultures had devoured 
them." 

The poet's dire fine^ was the same as the king's — and his hon- 

^ His honour-price was seven cumals (twentv-one cows). 

176 



THE POETS 177 

our-price usually the same. And because of the sacredness of 
his position he was, like the king, subject to degradation for any 
sin that besmirched the whiteness of his office. And for sins more 
venial he was, like king and commoner, amenable to the law — 
which prescribed, for instance, that he should pay fine for the un- 
fairness of satirising a man, in his absence; and for satirising by 
proxy — having his satire recited by a substitute, while he protected 
himself in the cowardly safety of distance. And he had to answer 
for crimes committed by any paying foreigners among his pupils. - 

From very ancient times in Ireland almost all things worth 
recording were put into verse for their more easy remembering, 
pleasanter reciting and more welcome hearing. The most ancient 
Lives of the Saints are in verse — or where they have come down 
in mixed verse and prose, the prose is only a later paraphrasing 
of verse whose language was becoming obsolete. Ancient history 
and genealogy were in verse — and likewise the ancient laws. When 
Patrick had the laws codified it will be remembered that a file was 
asked "to put a thread of poetry round them." Such old stand- 
ard records as the Book of Rights, and the Calendar of Aengus, 
are in rhyme. Even there have come down to us ancient school 
text-books, on various subjects, completely in verse. 

Some noted Continental scholars such as Zeuss and Nigra, agree 
with leading Irish authorities that it was the ancient Irish who in- 
vented rhyme — and introduced it, through the Latin, to the coun- 
tries of Europe. 

Constantine Nigra (quoted by Hyde) says: 

"The idea that rhyme originated among the Arabs must be ab- 
solutely rejected as fabulous. , . . Rhyme, too, could not in any 
possible way, have evolved itself from the natural progress of the 
Latin language. Amongst the Latins, neither the thing nor the name 
existed. The first certain examples of rhj^m.e, then, are found on 
Celtic soil and among Celtic nations . . . we conclude that final 
assonance or rhyme can have been derived only from laws of Celtic 
phonologj^" 

And Zeuss : 

"The form of Celtic poetry, to judge both from the older and 

2 A passage from the Brehon Laws : 

"The poet (or tutor) commands his pupils. The man from whom education 
is received is free from the crimes of his pupils, though he feeds and clothes them, 
and that they pay him for their learning. He is free, even though it be a stranger 
he instructs, feeds, and clothes, provided it is not for pay but for God that he 
does it. If he feeds and instructs a stranger for pay, it is then he is accountable 
for his crimes." 



178 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

the more recent examples adduced, appears to be more ornate than 
the poetic form of any other nation, and even more ornate in the 
older poems than in the modem ones; from the fact of which greater 
ornateness had undoubtedly come to pass that at the very time the 
Roman Empire was hastening to ruin, the Celtic forms — at first en- 
tire, afterguards in part — passed over not only into the songs of the 
Latins, but also into those of other nations and remain in them." 

Dr. Atkinson thinks it was as far away as two thousand years 
ago that the Irish began to grace their then ancient poetic art with 
their new invention of rhyme. From the Latin verses of Colm 
and other earliest Irish saints, we have positive proof that, any- 
how, rhyme was in use in Ireland in the very earliest Christian 
times — both vowel rhyme (assonance) and consonantal rhyme 
called comharda. 

The first English poet to use rhyme — in his Latin verse — was 
Aldhelm, in the eighth century, who, it will be noted, was a pupil 
of the Irish monk, Mael-dubh, whose school was on the site of the 
present English city of Malmesbury. And a century later, as Pro- 
fessor Zimmer points out, the poet Otfried, who first introduced 
rhyme to the German people, received his education at the Irish 
monastery of St. Gall in Switzerland. Even the first poets to sing 
in the Icelandic language had the Irish names Kormack and Sigh- 
vat, and were from an Irish ancestress — and we are warranted in 
concluding that their poetic education was Irish. Long centuries 
before that, the immortal Welsh poet, Caedmon, was educated by 
an Irishman, surrounded by Irish literary influences, and fed upon 
Irish literature. 

Douglas Hyde says: 

"Already, in the seventh century, the Irish not only rhymed but 
made intricate rhyming metres, when for many centuries after this, 
the Germanic nations could only alliterate. . . . And down to the 
first half of the sixteenth century the English poets for the most part 
exhibited a disregard for the fineness of execution and technique of 
which not the meanest Irish bard attached to the pettiest chief could 
have been guilty." 

As is only to be expected, the Irish, the inventors of rhyme, 
carried it to a wonderful perfection, never approached by any other 
people — a fact acknowledged even by those who still withhold 
from them the credit of having originated it. 

"After the seventh century," says Dr. Hyde, in his "Literary 
History of Ireland," "the Irish brought the rhyming system to a 
perfection undreamt of even to this day, by other nations. Per- 



THE POETS 179 

haps by no people on the globe at any period of the world's his- 
tory was poetry so cultivated, and better still, so remunerated, as 
in Ireland," And Dr. Atkinson pronounces Irish verse "the most 
perfectly harmonious combination of sounds that the world has 
ever known." Dr. Joyce says, "No poetry of any European lan- 
guage, ancient or modern, can compare with the Irish poetry for 
richness of melody." 

It was lavish in beautiful metres, in alliteration, in assonantal 
rhyme, in consonantal harmony. The rhymes were usually not at 
the end of the line only but were often repeated, again and again, 
within the line, which spilled over with richness of melody. 

The technique of Irish poetry was far and away more elabo- 
rate, complex, intricate and subtle than that of any other nation, 
ancient or modern. It had an amazingly complicated prosody — 
"astounding" is the term that Dr. Hyde applies to it. 

It is proof of the originality of Irish versification that the many 
technical terms used in this intricate prosody are purely Irish — 
showing no trace of Latin or other foreign influence. And Latin 
Christian influence would inevitably have left its impress on the 
system if that system had not been brought to complete perfection 
before the coming of Patrick, and the introduction of the general 
knowledge and use of Latin among the scholars and the clergy. 

It is difficult for us to realise that in the ancient Irish Schools 
of Poets the students were trained in not less than three hundred 
and fifty different kinds of metre. Twelve years was the minimum 
period^ of study in the schools. There were four grades of poet — 
each requiring three years of concentrated study. Each grade was 
sub-divided again many times. Of the lowest grade, the bard, 
there were sixteen divisions distinguished by the metres they had 
mastered. As Instance of the prosodial subtilty and complexity 
of the metres, let us instance that of one kind alone, the nath metre 
which was mastered by the king-bard, there were six different kinds, 
and these six again divided, some of them into as many as six sub- 
divisions. Therefore, it was an arduous task which arose before 
the Irish poetic aspirant — and wonderful and powerful was the 
mental training through which the Irish poet passed. 

The poet's course in literature embraced seven times fifty of 
the great bardic epics — all of which he must not only have mem- 
orised, but have mastered in every detail — and with each of which, 
when called upon, must be able to hold spellbound every gathering. 

^The English Campion in his "History of Ireland" recorded that in his day 
(16th century) the length of the course sometimes extended to 20 years. 



i8o THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Furthermore, when he should go for his final degree he must be able 
to compose an impromptu short poem on any subject suggested. 
The poet-ollam, the poet of the highest rank, must be a master of 
Irish history, Irish antiquities and genealogies of all the leading 
Irish families — and always able and ready at a moment's notice, 
to recite anything called for in any of these subjects. Few and 
far between are the twentieth century scholars who are as thor- 
oughly steeped in their subjects as were the poet-ollams of fifteen 
hundred years ago. 

Although poets were attached to certain courts of king or chief, 
where they received regular stipend together with a residence, land 
and animals (the oUam twenty-one cows and their grass, two 
hounds and six horses), they frequently made circuit of their prov- 
ince or of the country — accompanied by their retinue — honouring 
with their visits various princes and notables whose praises they 
chanted in such measure as their merits demanded. All courts and 
all residences were of course thrown wide to the touring poet and 
his company. Twenty-four was the number of attendants pre- 
scribed by law for the ollam poet when he bestowed for only one 
night, upon each host, the honour of his entertaining. When he 
intended a longer stay, or went to a feast (to which of course other 
companies were likewise coming), the law fixed ten for his follow- 
ing. But oftentimes the very famous poets, considering themselves 
greater than the law, travelled amid three or four times the pre- 
scribed number of attendants, and imposed themselves and their 
tribe for days and weeks, months even, upon courts that they fa- 
voured. The sixth century national poet, Senchan Torpeist (Dal- 
ian Forgaill's successor), visiting the court of the Connaught king, 
Guaire the Hospitable, with attendant poets, students, servants, 
wives, dogs and horses, treated his overpowered host to a year 
and a day of his party's joyous company! And, since under no 
conceivable circumstances could any host, much less a royal one, 
ask a poet to move on, this visitation might only have ended 
when Guaire was eaten into poverty, had not the king's brother, ^ 
the holy hermit, Marban, been blessed with the inspiration of com- 
missioning Senchan and his company to go eastward upon a literary 
mission (in search of the lost Tain Bo Cuailgne, which, tradition 
said, had been "carried east over the sea with the Cuilmen") which 
promised to take years, if not eternity, for its fulfilment. 

Senchan's parting ode to Guaire must have sounded In that 
king's ears one of the sweetest by poet ever spoken — if we except 
the alarming last stanza: 



THE POETS i8i 

**We depart from thee, O stainless Guaire! 
We leave with thee our blessing ; 
A year, a quarter, and a month, 
Have we sojourned with thee, O high-king! 

"Three times fiftj' poets, — good and smooth, — 
Three times fiftj^ students in the poetic art, 
Each with his servant and dog; 
They were all fed in the one great house. 

"Each man had his separate meal; 
Each man had his separate bed ; 
We never arose at early morning, 
With contentions without calming. 

"I declare to thee, O God ! 

Who canst the promise verify, 

That should we return to our own land, 

We shall visit thee again, O Guaire, though now we depart." 

Since in a land of poetry and of hospitality this privileged class 
had the strongest incentive to increase and multiply, it is no won- 
der their numbers and presumption grew to such proportion that 
they more than once became an unbearable burden upon the land. 
And three times in the early centuries, one of these being a time 
when they and their uncountable followers are said to have con- 
stituted a third of the population of the Island — the suffering peo- 
ple, goaded even to the point of outraging sacred tradition, pur- 
posed banishing from the land the poets and their bands. One of 
the last of these popular anti-poet outbreaks was that which was 
allayed by Colm at the Convention of Drimceatt. Though, twice 
within the half century following, Kings of Ulad (Ulster) had to 
harbour the bards and save them from extinction. 

Of course it was the riotous and disreputable ones — from which 
the poet-tribe was never free, in modern, any more than in ancient 
days — who dragged the whole body into these periodic spells of 
disrepute. The unworthy ones severely hurt the whole body, not 
only by outrageous imposition on the people's hospitality, but like- 
wise by the exactions which they drew from a too-willing people. 
The law of custom provided that a poet should be paid for his 
composition a price that was commensurate with his standing and 
the worth of his work. But sometim.es the reckless ones came to 
exact what they pleased. No one of any character would refuse a 



1 82 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

poet's demand. And indeed if any one was either unworthy enough 
to deny a worthy poet his price or foolhardy enough to refuse an 
exaction, he did so at the risk of being satirised with a biting poetic 
satire, which would make him the laughing-stock of the land, and 
his children's children's children the laughing-stock of generations 
yet unborn. And so gifted in this malicious art were some that 
it was legended their satires could not only blight the crops of the 
satirised, but actually raise blisters on his face.* 

The greedy ones carried with them a Coir Sdinnte, Pot of 
Avarice, for inviting donations. It was a small pot made of silver 
and hung by nine chains of fifidmine (white bronze) from golden 
hooks on the points of the spears of nine men of the poet's com- 
pany. The Coir Sdinnte preceded the greedy poet into a chief- 
tain's presence as he came chanting his poem of praise, chorused 
by his students. The chieftain and his friends were expected to 
make the pot-bearers feel the weight of their appreciation. 

The celebrated Ulster satirist, of the first century, Athairne, 
was one of the bitterest and most brazen as well as greediest of 
his tribe. On a time when he was going on circuit through Lein- 
ster, one king, fearful of his tongue, met him at the border of his 
territory, with great presents of money and cattle, in hope to buy 
off the threatened visitation. He went so far as, when he was visit- 
ing a king who had but one eye, to ask — and accept — that eye in 
payment for a poem. This account of his request is, we may judge, 
figurative — and a satire upon the satirist. That famous Leinster 
circuit of Athairne's was only ended by an Ulster-Leinster war, 
which his greed provoked. 

The time of Athairne was one of the several times in which 
the poet order got out of hand, and produced and prided itself 
upon such biting, bitter, malevolent and grasping ones as were 
he and his imitators. One of the latter, named Rcdg, got from 
Cuchullain meet reward for his Impudent presumption. He had 
appeared before Cuchullain and recited a poem in his praise — and 

* Once, when Dallon Forgaill stopped with Mongan, King of Meath, "Every 
night the poet would recite a story to Mongan. So great was his lore that they 
were thus from Halloweve till May-Day. He had gifts of food from Mongan. 
One day Mongan asked his poet what was the death of Fothad Airgdech. Forgaill 
said he was slain at Duffry in Leinster. Mongan said it was false. The poet 
(on hearing that) said that he would satirise him with his lampoons, and he would 
sing (spells) upon their waters, so that fish should not be caught in their river 
mouths. He would sing upon their woods so that they should not give fruit, upon 
their plains so that they should be barren forever of any produce. 

"Mongan (thereupon) promised him his fill of precious things, so far as (the 
value) of seven bondmaids, or twice seven bondmaids, or three times seven. At 
last he offers him one-third, or one-half of his land, or his whole land; at last 
(cver>'thing) save only his own liberty with that of his wife Breathigrend." 



THE POETS 183 

then demanded for fee Cuchullain's remarkable spear, supernatu- 
rally gifted, called the gae-buaid, or spear of victory. It was one of 
Cuchullain's enemies who had instigated the treacherous demand. 
The champion offered him instead many rich gifts, one after an- 
other, all of which were steadily refused by the poet, who at length 
threatened to satirise Cuchullain, and disparage his honour. "Then, 
take your gift!" cried the champion, flinging the spear with all his 
force at the miscreant, whom he transfixed through the skull across. 
And the satirist, exclaiming, "This indeed is an overpowering gift!" 
dropped dead. 

There were some notable instances of praiseworthy exactions 
imposed by high-minded poets on people who deserved punishment 
— exactions heartily approved of by a delighted country. Such 
was that of the eighth century Meath poet, Ruman (who died In 
742) , the "Virgil of the Gael," who, when he visited Dublin, then a 
stronghold of the Danish Galls, composed a poem to these Galls 
and named as his reward a penny to be paid him from every mean 
Gall and two pennies from every noble Gall. It is needless to add 
that he carried away from this city of foreign marauders a very 
weighty bag of money, Indeed — every piece of It a two-penny. He 
bore his booty to the noted School of Rathain, near Kilbeggan; 
and there to the crowd of foreign scholars (who occupied seven 
streets) he distributed one-third of his wealth; he gave another 
third to the school and kept a third to himself. 

The poet of repute in ancient time had no need to be exacting; 
for so high was the regard for him and for his work that the volun- 
tary fees were handsome. And they were consequently wealthy. 
The old proverb tells that "Three coffers whose depths are not 
known are those of the chieftain, the church and a privileged poet." 
Fees fixed by law were graduated according to a poet's rank. A 
file-poet, one of the highest order, was to be paid three milch-cows 
for a poem; and a bard of the lowest order, to be paid one calf. 
Naturally It was the latter class who usually sinned by their im- 
position. Impudence and unmerited satirising. 

The generous and the pleased paid the lawful fee and as much 
more as generosity prompted. A chieftain of the O'Donnells of 
TIr-Conalll who was a worthy patron of literature, once paid to a 
poet, who made a poem In his praise, a mare for every rann (four- 
line stanza). The patronage of the people of TIr-Conalll for the 
poet, is well exemplified in a poem by the great Flann MacLonain 
(tenth century). It relates how Flann and his suite arrived at 
the court of Elgnachan, prince of TIr-Conaill, just when the chief- 
tain had finished dividing among his nobles and his churches great 



i84 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

spoil of gold taken from the Danes. Eignachan blushed for 
shame at being empty-handed on a poet's advent — and his people, 
seeing their chiefs confusion, came forward and put into his hands 
again the gold he had given them; whereupon, the overjoyed Eig- 
nachan, from the restored store, bestowed lavishly on the poet — 
and divided the remainder among his people. 

The same MacLonain in another corner of Ireland was the 
recipient of another remarkable tribute to poetry — as related in 
a poem of his equally famous contemporary, MacLiag, the poet- 
ollam of Brian Boru. MacLiag tells how, one time that Mac- 
Lonain was travelling in Galway, he met a labouring man of the 
Dal Cas of Clare returning to his own country with the wages of 
twelve months' service in Galway, a cow and a cloak. When the 
poor Dalcassian learnt that it was the noble poet, MacLonain 
whom he encountered, he begged a poem of him: 

"He said to me in prudent words, 
Sing to me the history' of my country; 
It is sweet to my soul to hear it." 

MacLonain stirred his auditor with a poem in praise of the 
Dalcassians and was immediately rewarded with the twelve months' 
wages of the gratified one. But, for his pride of race, and gener- 
osity to a poet, the man was repaid tenfold by his equally proud 
and patriotic fellow Dalcassians, who, when they learnt what he 
had done, received him with honour in their assembly, and bestowed 
on him ten cows for every quarter of his own cow. 

But, it was the most illustrious of all Dalcassians, Brian Boru, 
the warrior king and patron munificent of poets and scholars, who 
once gave to MacLiag the richest gift probably ever bestowed upon 
one of the bardic race. On a day when Brian with his court stood 
upon the battlements of Kincora, gratefully gazing upon the vast 
tribute of cows^ from LUster and from Leinster, that were arriv- 
ing at the Castle, the poet at his side paid a word of praise upon 
the great flocks and herds that came to Brian — whereupon the mon- 
arch turning to the poet said : "They are all thine, O noble poet!" 

To this MacLiag is credited a classical piece of satire, one of 
the rarest ever originated in any language. Moreover, he skilfully 
combined, in one little off-hand remark, the most withering sar- 
casm with the dizziest praise. 

Once when he and his attendants had returned from circuit and 

' It was this which gave to Brian his title Boru (of the Cow Tribute). 



THE POETS 185 

he was entertaining Brian's court with accounts of his travels, the 
king inquired which of all the visited chieftains had rewarded him 
most generously. To everybody's amazement, the poet named one 
who was notorious for niggardliness. "Donal MacDubh O'Dav- 
eren," he said, "was the most generous of all." "What did he give 
you?'' asked Brian. "A leathern girdle and clasp," answered Mac- 
Liag. "Did you visit Cian, the son of Malloy, chief of the Euge- 
nians of Cashel, and his wife, Sabia, my daughter?" "Yes. They 
advanced to meet me when they heard I was coming. They had 
myself and fifty of my train borne on men's shoulders. We were 
brought to their Dun, and each man was given handsome garments, 
a chain shirt and a cloak. To me Cian gave his own habiliments, 
his horse, his armour, his chess-tables and nine score of his best 
kine. He gave fifty steeds to my train — and lavished gold and fifty 
rings on my bards." Said the astonished Brian, "Strange it is 
that you are more grateful to Donal MacDubh O'Daveren for his 
paltry girdle and clasp, than to Cian and Sabia." "Not strange 
it is," replied MacLiag, "for it was more difficult to O'Daveren 
to part with that girdle and clasp than to Cian and Sabia to bestow 
all theii noble gifts." 

The tenth-century poet, MacCoise, when ending a visit to Mul- 
rooney, King of Connaught (ancestor of the O'Connors), was pre- 
sented by that king with a chess-board, a valuable sword, fifty 
milch cows and thirty steeds. And MacLiag in his eulogy on the 
death of another great Connaught king, Tadg O'Kelly (whose 
court-poet he had been), tells how, on the day that Tadg won the 
battle of Loch Riach, he presented to him: 

"An hundred cows, an hundred swords, an hundred shields, 
An hundred oxen for the ploughing season, 
And an hundred halter horses. 

"He gave me on the night of Glenn-gerg, 
An hundred cloaks and an hundred scarlet frocks, 
Thirty spears of blood-stained points. 
Thirty tables, and thirty chess-boards." 

In the case of the plundering and burning of the poet Mac- 
Coise's home by Donal O'Neill's army, the noted scholar Flann 
of Clanmacnois assessed the damages due a poet for such insult 
and loss; namely, full restitution and in addition fourteen cumals 
(forty-two cows), and the breadth of the poet's face of gold. By 
the learned men present, O'Neill himself, and his chiefs, it was 



1 86 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

then agreed that such should be the damages ever after payable in 
all similar cases.® 

No great wonder it was that a class of men so favoured, in- 
dulged, flattered and honoured, should sometimes find among them 
many who came to think that no consideration should bar them 
from the gratification of their lightest whim; and that no man's 
rights were of any importance, if they came in conflict with their 
rights. This point of view is strikingly exemplified in a quatrain 
from a poem of Muiredach O'Daly who considered himself grossly 
and wantonly persecuted because The O'Donnell pursued him from 
tuath to tuath, and from kingdom to kingdom over Ireland, after 
he had killed that prince's steward at Lissadill: 

"Trifling our quarrel with the man (i.e., O'Donnell) 
A clown to be abusing me, 
And me to kill the churl — 
Dear God, is this a cause for enmity!" 

But a poet's moral attainments were expected to be on the same 
high level with his intellectual. There were demanded of him : 

"Purity of hand, bright without wounding. 
Purity of mouth without poisonous satire, 
Purity of learning without reproach, 
Purity of husbandship." 

And, despite grave sins of the few sinners among them, the 
ancient poets of Eirinn proved themselves worthy of their sacred 
trust. 

Much of the work done by the official poet was of a utilitarian 
nature. The chief duties of his office, as king's file, were to keep 
in verse the historical, genealogical and legal records; to prepare 
for the public special poetic accounts of particular actions in which 
the people were engaged; and to sing the feats of the champions, 
the hospitality of the princes and the charms of the women. Such 
were the more important subjects from which the poet was expected 
to derive inspiration. And very many examples of the ancient 
poet's work preserved down the centuries, are concerned with these 
matters. 

But the unofl'icial poet showed a wide range of inspiration. 
Amongst the old poetic pieces, which escaped the destructive hand 

^ It was MacCoise himself, by means of a very clever allegorical poem, which 
he entitled The Plunder of the Castle of Maelmilscothach, who brought O'Neill 
to realize the enormity of the insult done by his men — and induced him to volun- 
teer full satisfaction. 



THE POETS 187 

of alien enemies and blight of time are several which show the 
ancient poet's marvellously keen observation, and ardent love, of 
Nature, as well as his wonderfully subtle sense of beauty. Here 
is a nature-picture (attributed to Oisin) as vivid as ancient: 

"A tale for you: oxen lowing: winter snowing: summer passed 
away: wind from the north, high and cold: low the sun and short 
his course: wildly tossing the wave of the sea. The fern burns deep 
red. Men wrap themselves closely: the wild goose raises her 
wonted cry: cold seizes the wing of the bird: 'tis the season of ice: 
sad my tale." 

A poem attributed to Fionn is this description of May-day 
(translated by O'Donovan) which shows that the love of nature, 
was, in the far-away days of Ireland as truly cultivated, and as de- 
lightfully expressed, as it has ever been in modern countries of 
modern days: 

"May day! delightful time! how beautiful the colour; 
The blackbirds sing their full lay. Would that Laegh were here* 
The cuckoos sing in constant strains. Now welcome is the noble 
Brilliance of the seasons ever! On the margin of the branchy woods 
The summer swallows skim the streams. The swift horses seek the 

pooL 
The heather spreads out her long hair. The weak fair bog-down 

grows. 
Sudden consternation attacks the signs ; the planets 
In their courses running, exert an influence ; 
The sea is lulled to rest, flowers cover the earth." 

And now that Erin had become a land of schools, and of scribes, 
we find one of the latter, entranced with his work, charmingly im- 
parting to us the beauty of his feeling. 

THE SCRIBE ' 

A hedge of trees surrounds me, 
A blackbird's lay sings to me; 
Above my lined booklet 
The thrilling birds chant to me. 

In a grey mantle from the top of bushes 
The cuckoo sings : 
Verily may the Lord shield me: — 
Well do I write under the greenwood. 

^ This poem and the one that follows are from Kuno Meyer's "Ancient Irish 
Poetry." 



1 88 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

A couple of hundred years after Patrick, a passionate desire 
to live alone with God and Nature swept Ireland, and carried to 
the wilderness and to remote and lonely islands tens of thousands 
of intellectual and spiritual ones. One of the many hermit-poets 
puts his soothed soul into a seductive song which In these days of 
unrest makes us realise that though he is called hermit it is we who 
are alone. 

HERMIT'S SONG 

I wish, O Son of the living God, O ancient, eternal King, 

For a hidden litde hut in the wilderness that it may be my dwelling. 

An all-grey lithe little lark to be by its side, 

A clear pool to wash away sins through the grace of the Holy Spirit. 

Quite near, a beautiful wood around it on every side, 
To nurse many-voiced birds, hiding it with its sheher. 

A southern aspect for warmth, a little brook across its floor, 
A choice land with many gracious gifts such as be good for every 
plant. 

A few men of sense — we will tell their number — 
Humble and obedient, to pray to the King: — 

Four times three, three times four, fit for every need, 
Twice this in the church, both North and South : — 

Six pairs besides myself. 

Praying forever to the King who makes the sun shine. 

A pleasant church and with the linen altar cloth, a dwelling for God 

from Heaven; 
Then, shining candles above the pure white scriptures. 

One house for all to go to for the care of the body. 

Without ribaldr)', without boasting, without thought of evil. 

This is the husbandry I would take, I would choose, and will not 

hide it: 
Fragrant leek, hens, salmon, trout, bees; 

Raiment and food for me from the King of fair fame, 
And I to be sitting for a while praying God in every place. 

And when the Connaught King, Cellach, from a hollow-tree 
where, cornered by his enemy Maelcroin and armed band, he had 
spent his last night on earth — beheld the spears of that dawn which 
ushered in his death, he could not, still, withhold the expression 
of his rapture : 



THE POETS 189 

® "HAIL to the Morning, that as a flame falls on the ground! 
hail to Him too, that sends her, the Morning many-virtued, ever-new! 

"O Morning fair, so full of pride, O sister of the brilliant sun! 
hail to the beauteous morning that lightest for me my little book! 

"Thou seest the guest in every dwelling, and shinest on every 
tribe and kin; hail, O thou white-necked beautiful one, here with 
us now, golden fair, wonderful!" 

"My little book of chequered page tells me," continues Cel- 
lach, "that my life has not been right." For, Cellach, even in 
flight for his life had with him one of the books he dearly loved. 
A student he had been, and should have continued — but, in a fool- 
ish moment that he lived to regret in bitterness, he gave up the 
student's cloister for the court. And in another poem this sixth- 
century student-king sighs his sharp regret: 

"Woe to him who leaveth lore 

For the red world's arts or ore; 
Who the true God's love would leave 
With the false world's Kings to cleave ! 

"Woe who taketh arms in life 
And retaineth hand of strife. 
Better far books of whiteness 
Where psalms are seen in brightness!" 

— From a translation by Dr. Sigerson. 

The English poet Tennyson dipped into ancient Irish lore and 
poetry before singing of Arthur. Knowing this, we are led to won- 
der if he who wrote Crossing the Bar did not stumble upon the 
beautiful little piece of our ninth-century Cormac MacCuilleanain : 

"Wilt Thou steer my frail black bark 
O'er the dark broad ocean's foam? 
Wilt Thou come. Lord, to my boat 
Where afloat, my will would roam? 
Thine the mighty. Thine the small. 
Thine to make men fall like rain, 
God, wilt Thou grant aid to me 
As I come o'er the upheaving main ?" * 

^ Translated by Douglas Hyde. 

^ There are dozens of different kinds of the poems of ancient Ireland that 
must be left unsampled. But here is one on the fleetingness of life, translated by 
O'Donovan, which while far from being as good as a hundred others that might 
be quoted, is in a style that will please many readers — 

Like a damask rose you see, 
Or like a blossom on a tree, 



I90 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Hyde, Douglas, LL.D. : A Literary History of Ireland, from the earliest 
times to the present day. 

Irish Poetry: an Essay in Irish, with translation in English. 

Sigerson, Dr. Geo. : Bards of the Gael and Gall. 

O'Curry, Eugene: Manuscript Materials of Irish History. 

Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish. 

Joyce, P. W. : Social History of Ancient Ireland. 
Meyer, Kuno: Ancient Irish Poetry, 

Carmichael, Alexander: Carmina Gadelica: Hymns and Incantations orally 
collected in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, and translated into 
English. 

Or like a dainty flower in May, 
Or like the morning to the day. 
Or like the sun, or like the shade, 
Or like the gourd which Jonah made ; 
Even such is man whose thread is spun, 
Drawn out and out, and so is done. 

The rose withers, the blossom blasteth, 
The flower fades, the morning hasteth. 
The sun sets, the shadow flies, 
The gourd consumes, the man — he dies. 

Like the grass that's newly sprung, 
Or like the tale that's new begun, 
Or like the bird that's here to-day, 
Or like the pearly dew in May, 
Or like the hour, or like the span, 
Or like the singing of the swan ; 
Even such is man who lives by breath, 
Is here, now there, in life and death. 

The grass withers, the tale is ended. 
The bird is flown, the dew's ascended, 
The hour is short, the span not long, 
The swan's near death, man's life is done. 

Like the bubble in the brook, 
Or in a glass much like a look, 
Or like shuttle in weaver's hand. 
Or like the writing on the sand. 
Or like a thought, or like a dream, 
Or like the gliding of the stream; 
Even such is man, who lives in breath. 
Is here, now there, in life and death. 

The bubble's blown, the look forgot. 
The shuttle's flung, the writing's not. 
The thought is past, the dream is gone, 
The water's run, man's life is done. 

Like an arrow from a bow, 
Or like a course of water flow. 
Or like the time 'twixt flood and ebb, 
Or like the spider's tender web, 
Or like a race, or like a goal, 
Or like the dealing of a dole; 
Even such is man whose battle state 
Is always subject unto fate. 



THE POETS 191 

The arrow shot, the flood soon spent, 
The time no time, the web soon rent, 
The race soon run, the goal soon won, 
The dole soon dealt, man's life soon done. 

Like the lightning from the sky, 

Or like a post that quick doth hie, 

Or like a quaver in a song, 

Or like a journey three days' long 

Or like the snow when summer's come, 

Or like the pear, or like the plum; 

Even such is man, who heaps up sorrow. 

Lives this day, and dies to-morrow. 

The lightning's past, the post must go, 
The song is short, the journey so, 
The pear doth rot, the plum doth fall. 
The snow dissolves, and so must all. 



CHAPTER XXV 

THE IRISH KINGDOM OF SCOTLAND 

Probably there is nothing in Irish history which has caused more 
confusion than the terms Scotia and Scot, which, at first appHed 
to Ireland and Irishmen, came to be appUed later to Ireland's 
northeastern neighbour. Alba, and its inhabitants. A statement of 
the cause of this change may aid to untangle a historical tangle 
which troubles the minds of many who are not students. 

It will be remembered that our most ancient poets and seana- 
chies claimed that an early name for Eirinn, Scotia, was derived 
from Scota, queen-mother of the Milesians. The derivation may, 
or may not, be imaginary. But, downward from the days of the 
Emperor Constantine the Great, when the poet Egesippus tells 
how "Scotia which links itself to no land, trembles at their (the 
Roman legions') name" — the term Scotia is, by Continental writers, 
applied to Ireland more often than any other name. And Scot is 
the term by these writers most constantly applied to a native of 
Eirinn. Orosius, the third century geographer, uses "Hibernia the 
nation of the Scoti." 

As late as the end of the seventh century we find the Irishman 
Adamnan, when residing and writing in the country which is now 
Scotland, using the word Scotia to designate his own home coun- 
try from which he is an exile. And down in the eleventh century 
we have an Irish exile on the Continent, the celebrated Marianus 
Scotus (Marian the Scot) referring to his countrymen as Scots. 
The foreigner, Hermann, in the same century, is calling them Scots 
likewise. And still farther on, in the thirteenth century, Cassar of 
Heisterbach, talking of Purgatory, requests any one who doubts 
its existence to go to Scotia to St. Patrick's Purgatory there, and 
be convinced. The reference is to the then world-famous St. Pat- 
rick's Purgatory in Loch Dearg (Donegal) where penitents en- 
closed for many d-^ys in a cave, had vision of Heaven, Hell and 
Purgatory. 

Isidore of Seville, writing in the seventh century, uses the 
phrase, "Scotia eadem et Hibernia.'' And Charlemagne's biog- 

192 



THE IRISH KINGDOM OF SCOTLAND 193 

rapher, the celebrated Notker le Begue of the ninth century who 
was intimate with the Irishmen of the school of St. Gall in Switzer- 
land, and a pupil of the Irish teacher Mongan, there — uses the 
phrase "In the Island Hibernia, or Scotia," when talking of Colm 
Cille. And again in talking of St. Kilian, the martyred bishop of 
Wurzburg, he says: "He came from Hibernia, the Island of the 
Scots." 

The modern name of Ireland seems to have originated witli 
the Northmen, in about the seventh century — being probably 
formed from Eire, they called it Ir or Ire, and after that the Eng- 
lish called it Ireland, and its natives Irish. For several centuries 
longer, however, these terms were not adopted by Continental 
writers, who still continued to speak of Scotia and the Scot, and 
designated the Irish scholars on the Continent by the term Scotus. 
The new name Ireland was on the Continent, first used only in the 
eleventh century (by Adam De Breme). 

To Alba (the present Scotland) was transferred the term 
Scotia, and to its people the term Scot, because the Scoti of Hiber- 
nia, having again and again colonised there, built in it a strong king- 
dom, which gave the Scotic (Irish) people dominance there, and 
soon made the Scotic kings the kings of the whole country. The 
first account of Scotic colonising in Alba occurs in the very begin- 
ning of the third century when Conaire the Great, a son-in-law of 
Conn of the Hundred Battles, was King of Munster — to become 
later High King of Ireland. One of his three sons, the Carbris, 
Carbri Riada, namely, led a large body of his people from Kerry to 
the northeast of Antrim, where he settled some of them, and cross- 
ing Sruth-na-Moill to the adjacent coast of Scotland, settled a col- 
ony there also — in those peninsulas and islands which are now 
part of Argyle.^ 

This first colony of Scots from Ireland to settle in Alba, from 
time to time received increase in numbers from the mother coun- 
try — and military help also whenever they needed it against their 
neighbours, the Picts. 

A hundred years later, namely, in the first part of the fourth 
century, Lugaid MacConn, another Munsterman and a descendant 
of Conn of the Hundred Battles, who had to flee from Ireland, 
brought some accessions of strength to them, when he came there 

^ It is held by some that Carbri Riada settled his people entirely in Antrim, 
and that it was Fergus who first brought the people of Dal Riada over the water, 
and established the Scotic kingdom of Alba. The former, however, is the popular 
belief, and is attested by the Venerable Bede as well as others. O'Flaherty and 
Usher differ with Bede, though. 



194 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

about two centuries later, and made himself a power in the Scotlc 
colony. From his son, Fothaid Canan, whom he left in power 
there when he returned to Ireland, to wrest the High Kingship 
from Art the Lonely, sprang the ancestors of the lords of Arg)'le, 
variously named MacAllen, Campbell and MacCallum Mor. 

About a hundred years after Carbri Riada had established the 
Scotic Dal Riada in Alba, as well as the Dal Riada in Antrim, there 
also came to the Scotic colony a considerable accession of strength 
— a body of their kinsmen from Kerry led by one of their chief- 
tains, Fergus. 

The Picts, naturally jealous of these usurpers on their soil, 
continued exerting the utmost pressure upon them, in the hope of 
crushing them out, till Niall of the Nine Hostages, going to their 
assistance with an army, overcame and drove back the Picts, estab- 
lished the Scotic kingdom in Alba on a solid foundation, and, it is 
said, got the submission of the Picts and the tribute of all Alba. 

When the colony had added another hundred years to its age — 
at the beginning of the sixth century that is — it got its greatest 
and strongest accession by the coming of a Niallan host, headed 
by the three grandsons of Ere, Lome, Aongus and Fergus Mor 
their leader — who gave new blood, strength and leadership to the 
Dal Riada of Alba, and made it an island power to be reckoned 
with. For before the century's end it was strong and plucky enough 
to demand its complete independence from the mother country — a 
claim which, in 576, King Aedh, accompanying Colm, carried to 
the Convention of Drimceatt — and which was settled to the young 
kingdom's complete satisfaction. While united to Ireland by the 
closest bonds of blood, friendship, education and military in- 
tercourse, it was now a separate and independent kingdom^ — with 
the Antrim Dal Riada, some hold, as an appanage. 

The Scots' kingdom of Argyle and the islands held its own and 
more, for a long time. But at the end of the eighth century, in 
the reign of Don Coirce, the Northmen pushed them eastward 
from their original seat, and they in turn pushed the Picts east and 
northeast, and against these Picts conducted a campaign of con- 
quest which lasted half a century, till, in the year 850, their king, 
Cinead (Kenneth) MacAlpin, completely overthrew the Picts and 
was the first Gaelic king of (the chief part of) Scotland. Some 
claim that he got dominion over the Britons, who occupied the 
southwest of the country and the Anglo-Danish population of the 

2 MacNeill holds that the Alban Dal Riada had got its independence from the 
mother-country before Drimceatt — and that Aedh's claim at Drimceatt was for 
sovereignty over his kinsmen of the Antrim Dal Riada. 



I 

1 



THE IRISH KINGDOM OF SCOTLAND 195 

southeast. Now that the Scotic people got complete dominion over 
all or the main part of the country, it began to be called Scotia — 
at first Scotia Minor, in contradistinction to Eire, which was Scotia 
Major — but gradually the title Scotia fell away from Eire, and 
solely came to signify Alba. 

In the eleventh century, when all of the present country of Scot- 
land — with exception of the Western Islands and headlands, 
and northern islands, which were held by the Danes — had been 
brought under Scotic sway, the dominant Gaelic power began to 
wane. A number of leading English families who fled or were 
driven from the south, in consequence of the Norman invasion, 
flocked into southeastern Scotland and came into favour at court (in 
Edinburgh). Then also Malcolm married Margaret, daughter of 
Edmund, King of the Saxon peoples (afterwards St. Margaret). 
The new influences began to affect king, court and government 
from this time forward. And the king began to find it easy to lean 
upon the newcomers, the southerners, as well as their kinsmen, the 
old Anglo-Danish colony of the southeast, in the differences that 
were constantly arising between him and the semi-independent (Gae- 
lic) chieftains of the Highlands. When, at the end of the eleventh 
century, Malcolm's son, Edgar, English both by name and nature, 
was crowned king — the Gaelicism of royalty and of the court 
waned more rapidly, till in the thirteenth century it went out alto- 
gether; and the last of the Irish royal line became extinct with 
Alexander the Third, who died without heir in 1287. Then be- 
gan the Wars of Succession among the Lowland old-English fam- 
ilies, the Bruces and the Balliols. 

So, though the greater portion of the country was, and still is, 
Gaelic — with Gaelic manners, customs, dress and language, still 
holding in the Highlands and the Islands — the end of the thirteenth 
century saw the end of Scotic (Irish) rule in Alba. 

Keating's History of Ireland. 

Joyce, P. W. : Social History of Ancient Ireland. 

O'Curry, Eugene: Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish. 

Manuscript Materials of Irish History. 

MacNeill, Eoin: Some Phases of Irish History. 
Skene, W. F.: Celtic Scodand. 



CHAPTER XXVI 

THE CENTURIES OF THE SAINTS 

The new impetus and aim tliat Patrick gave to the Irish nation, 
turning it from war-love to ideals much higher, wrought in the 
island a phenomenal transformation. While foreign warring and 
raiding ceased, and internal warring became more rare, tens of 
thousands of every rank and class in the nation vied with one an- 
other, not, as formerly, for skill in handling war weapons, but 
for ease in conning the Scriptures; not for gaining fame in fight- 
ing, but for gathering favour in the sight of God. The religious 
development and spiritual revolution were extraordinary. A con- 
suming thirst for knowledge, and burning ardour for spreading the 
Gospel, swept the eager land, as a Lammas fire would sweep the 
powder-dry mountainside. Old and young, men and women, teacher 
and fighter, king and kerne, all were caught up in the Christ-fire 
that glowed in every vale and leaped on every hill in Erin. The 
true history of several centuries succeeding Patrick's coming, con- 
sists not of the chronicle of Erin's wars, and the roll of her kings, 
but the record of the thousands of the saints,^ and the tens of thou- 
sands of the teachers of Erin. And let us keep in mind that this 
period of the spiritual rejuvenation of the island on the verge of 
the world synchronised with that dark and fearful period in Eu- 
rope when Christianity and culture were being mercilessly over- 
whelmed by the onward-rolling, irresistible wave of barbarism that 
left naught but wild desolation in its wake. 

Fortunate for Europe and for the world it was that in this 
dread hour the Lord called the eager labourers of Eire to His 
island vineyard; and from it sent the saving vintage far and wide 
for the reviving of a perishing world. 

'Tor once, at any rate, Ireland drew on herself the eyes of the 
whole world," says Kuno Meyer, in the Preface to his Ancient Irish 
Poetry . . . "as the one haven of rest in a turbulent world overrun 

. ^ ^ 

1 All men who signally devoted themselves to the religious life then were 1 
termed saints. 

196 



THE CENTURIES OF THE SAINTS 197 

by hordes of barbarians, as the great seminary of Christianity and 
classic learning. Her sons, carrying Christianity and a new human- 
ism over Great Britain and the Continent, became teachers of whole 
nations, the councillors of Kings and Emperors. . . . The Celtic spirit 
dominated a large part of the Western world and its Christian ideals 
imparted new life to a decadent civilisation." 

Christianity and learning went hand in hand in Ireland. Al- 
most every one of her multitude of holy men became scholars, and 
every holy scholar became a teacher. Each holy man's fame went 
wide over the land, attracting to him crowds who desired to sit at 
his feet and emulate him. And unexpectedly would he then find 
himself the head of a school — for, both for their sake and for 
sake of those with whom they should afterwards work, it was 
necessary to educate the colony of disciples, whose little huts 
and bothies arose so thickly around his own modest habitation. 
Hence, ecclesiastical schools, side by side with their secular 
forerunners, and soon far overshadowing them, sprang up in 
every corner of the country, till the land was thickly dotted with 
them. 

Of what is known of the holy men of this period many volumes 
have been written. It would take infinitely more volumes to record 
all that has been lost or forgotten regarding them. Here we can 
only suggest the men and the time, by sketching some shadowy 
outlines of a few of the more prominent figures — chiefly saints of 
the second order — with a few scraps of the characteristic folk-lore 
that has grown entwiningly around their memory. 

For, those centuries had three orders of saints, namely: the 
Patrician or secular clergy, missionaries who travelled and preached 
Christ to all the land during the hundred years succeeding the com- 
ing of Patrick; the monastic saints, who, during the next hundred 
years, cultivated Christianity in, and radiated it from, their monastic 
establishments and monastic schools; and the anchorites, the hermit 
saints, who, succeeding the great ones of the second order, culti- 
vated Christ in solitude, on lonely islands, on wild mountain-tops, 
and in the impenetrable wilderness. These last, like Fechin, Se- 
nach, Coleman, Ernaan, are described as "holy and shone as aurora ; 
the second class, more holy, lighted the land as does the moon; and 
the first, most holy, were like the sun that warms the land by the 
fervour of its brightness." 

Under the second order such communities sprang up as that of 
St. Nessan,* of Mungret (near Limerick) of which Keating states, 

2 "Never came forth from his mouth w^hat was false or deceitful." 



198 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

"The following was the number of its members, to wit, five hun- 
dred monks who were men of learning, whose office it was to 
preach to the people, six hundred choristers who sang in the choir, 
and four hundred seniors who were devoted to the meditation of 
divine things." 

One of the most honoured and most beloved of the second 
order of Irish saints was Finian of Clonard, a child of the Clan 
Rory — "a doctor of wisdom and tutor of the saints of Erin, in 
his time," as O'Clery in his Martyrology styles him. For, from 
his famous school at Cluain-erard — Clonard, on the River Boyne 
— went forth the twelve saints who were styled the Twelve 
Apostles of Eirinn: the two Ciarans, the two Brendans, the two 
Cqlms,^ Mqbi,"* Ruadan, Lasseri^an, Ciannech, Senj^ch and Ninnid 
of Loch Erne. Strange to say, Finian got his education in Britain 
— in that part which is now called Wales. There he studied chiefly 
under Cadoc, who was himself part Irish and had been trained by 
two Irish teachers. He also studied under the Welshman Gildas, 
who had conducted some of his own studies in Ireland. After 
Finian had returned to Ireland, and had established himself, about 
A. D. 520, on the Boyne, his fame for piety and for wisdom spread 
so fast that in short time a community was established there. "Ab- 
bots left their monasteries and bishops their sees, to come to learn 
Divine Wisdom from his lips." "His school," says O'Clery, "was 
in quality a holy city full of wisdom and virtue. And he came to 
be called Finian the Wise." 

The growth of his community, and of his power, are well illus- 
trated in a little incident recorded of Colm Cille's first coming 
there. Having told the little stranger, to whom he took a liking, 
to build his hut at the door of the church and finding, later, that 
he had, instead, in his modesty, gone far off to build, Finian af- 
fectionately chided him for not doing what he had been told — to 
which the princeling from Tir-Conaill prophetically replied, "But 
here, before long, the door of thy church will be." 

His school grew so enormously that it is recorded he had at 
length three thousand pupils, native and foreign. 

^ Of course this refers to the two most famed Colms — Colm of lona and Colm 
of Tir-da-glass. There were scores of St. Colms. O'Halloran reckons of Irish 
Saints whose names were common : 4 named Colga, 10 named Gobhan, 12 Dicuil, 
12 Maidoc, 12 Adran, 13 Caman, 13 Dimian, 14 Brendan, 14 Finian, 14 Ronan, 15 
Conall, 15 Dermod, 15 Lugad, 16 Lassaran, 18 Comin, 19 Foilla, 20 Ciaran, 20 
Ultan, 22 Gillian, 23 Aidan, 30 Gronan, Zl Moluan, 43 Lasrian, 34 Mochuma, 58 
Mochua, 55 Flntan, 60 Cormac, 200 Colman. 

* Mobi, who had a school at Glasnevin, sent to Colm Gille on Tona, the present 
of a certain sacred girdle. "Good was the man who had this girdle, for it never 
opened on feasting nor closed on falsehood." 



THE CENTURIES OF THE SAINTS 199 

That Finian's pupils advanced in sanctity as they did in knowl- 
edge we learn from a quaint bit of lore recorded in the old Book 
of Lismore, which tells how Finian, otherwise occupied himself, 
once sent the student Senach to observe and bring him word how 
the other pupils were engaged — "Different in sooth was that at 
which each of them was found, yet all were good. Colm the son 
of Crimthann was with hands stretched forth, and mind contem- 
plative of God, the wild birds resting on his hands and on his 
head.^ * 

With this Finian is sometimes confounded his contemporary, 
Finian of Moville" in Down, who, Colgan says, is the Irish Frigi- 
dius, who became bishop of Lucca in Italy — at whose school the 
great Colm chiefly studied, and from whose book of the Scriptures 
he took the surreptitious copy that indirectly caused his exile. 

The Senach just referred to — the saintly Senach, on whom at- 
tended many miracles, and who was one of the twelve apostles of 
Erin, is the same who afterwards failed in attempt to turn away 
from his Island of Iniscathy (at the mouth of the Shannon) the 
holy woman Canaire. He conducted on this Island of Iniscathy 
a noted school. It was when (before that) he conducted an estab- 
lishment at Iniscara, that there is said to have landed in Cork a 
ship's company of Romans, hither attracted by Erin's fame for 
holiness and wisdom. Ten of these Romans are said to have 
joined Senach's Iniscara community. That he should be a worthy 
and inspiring teacher is not to be wondered at, for as a lad he had 
an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, which forced him to be- 
come that which in later days was termed a "poor scholar." He 
had read and profited by the verse of Matthew which says : "Who- 
soever will be great among you, let him be your servant." And 
for his teaching he paid with service. He herded cows and calves 
for Notal of Kell Manach, with whom he read. Senach carried 
a book with him to the fields, when he went herding.^ 

5 Once, says a legend, Kevin of Glendalough prayed so intently that a bird 
built its nest between his extended palms, laid its eggs, and reared its young. 

^ Of this Finian of Moville is related one of the heavenly bird legends — which, 
however, for chronological reasons, must have been first related of some other of 
the many St. Finians. Once when he was in the woods gathering wattles for 
building a monastery, a beautiful bird sang three enchanting songs to him — which 
held him spell-bound for, he thought, several minutes. But when the songs were 
finished and that he went home with his burden of wattles, — which were still green 
—he was astounded to see a great monastery built — and occupied by a commu- 
nity of men all strange to him. When he and they had got over mutual aston- 
ishment and bewilderment, and that the records were searched it was found that 
a Finian had gone into the woods to gather wattles 150 years ago — and never re- 
turned ! 

^ So that he might not be distracted in his reading, he would, when he went 



200 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Like Senach, Ciaran the Wright, he of Clonmacnois, herded 
in his youth, and carried to the herding his hunger for knowledge. 
He was herding in Magh Ai for his foster-father, Justus, who was 
also his tutor when, attracted by the saintliness of Ciaran, a fox 
out of the woods made itself his serv^ant, it is said.* 

Ciaran was a beautiful character, who was cut off in the flower- 
ing of his manhood.^ After Colm, he had been the favourite of 
his master, Finian, at Clonard. To Finian's eyes he was the moon, 
who was to cheer and enlighten the centre of Ireland, while Colm 
was the sun which should enlighten Erin and Alba, and all of West- 
ern Europe. 

His liberality, and love of helping others, made him noted — 
and won for him a nick-name, when he studied under the loving eye 
of his spiritual father, Finian. It was on the first day when that 
little Ninnid the slant-eyed, of Loch Erne, seeking the knowledge 
for which his soul yearned, came to the big school. When the 
great-hearted Finian had spoken with, and accepted, and enrolled 
the shy little fellow from Loch Erne, he told him to go among the 
scholars and borrow a book. But all whom the timid boy visited 
were so deep in their studies that they could not spare him what he 
wanted. He returned to Finian and told him he had made the 
rounds of the school, but could get no book from the scholars. 
"Hast thou gone," said Finian, "to yon tender youth who is on the 

to the pasture, separate the calves from the cows — drawing a line across the field 
between them, over which neither had the power to go to the other. And when 
in the grinding season, he had to take his turn sitting up in the mill at night, he 
also brought a book for study. On one occasion, when they knew that he was 
there alone, robbers came, but on arriving saw to their dismay two men, one 
reading and one grinding. And their evil scheme was thus miraculously thwarted. 

Of pupils in his school is told a beautiful incident. Two of them, little boys, 
having gone with another bigger boy, Donnan, the son of Liach, to cut sea-weed 
for the master, were drowned. To assuage the frantic grief of their parents, 
Senach recalled their souls to their discovered bodies. Then the re-living lads 
protested to their mother : "O Mother, though the power of the whole world 
was given us and its delightfulness and joyance, we would deem it the same as 
if we were in prison, compared with being in the life and the land we reached." 

s The fox. we are told, used to carry back and forth between pupil and 
tutor the psalter wherein Ciaran read. The animal would sit by Ciaran in the 
field, barkening to the boy reading his lesson to the end, and would watch while 
Ciaran, with his style, copied the lesson upon the waxen tablets. Then the wise 
animal, taking the tablets in his mouth, carried them, with the psalter, home to 
Justus, and brought them back corrected. But, once, tempted by the tastiness of 
the wax, the fox succumbed to the devil's prompting — and went aside from the 
straight path to enjoy the lesson under a bush. Aongus, the son of Crimthann came 
upon him with his hounds and men at that critical moment, and gave chase to 
Reynard, who, with the tablets, fled for his life. He ran to Ciaran and came 
under his cowl, .^nd Ciaran saved the fox from the hounds, and the tablets 
from the fox. 

» He died A. D. 548. aged only 33. "He never uttered a word that was false." 



THE CENTURIES OF THE SAINTS 201 

north of the green?" Ninnid, replying that he had not done so, 
was directed to go there now. The tender youth was Ciaran, the 
son of the Carpenter. When the slant-eyed one asked Ciaran if 
he might have his book to read from, the reader was studying that 
verse of Matthew: "Omnia qusecumque ultis ut faciant homini," 
etc. — and turning to the timid lad, answered him : "This I read, 
that I should do unto others what I would desire them to do unto 
me. So, though I am only half through Matthew, you may have 
it." And he gave his book to the little fellow with whom no one 
else would bother. His playful fellow-students hereupon nick- 
named him "Ciaran half-Matthew" — and when the story came to 
the ears of Finian, he proudly said to these students: "Not Ciaran 
half-Matthew will he be, but Ciaran half-Ireland." 

Shortly before his birth, Ciaran's mother came to visit a holy 
bishop, who, when he heard the roll of her approaching chariot 
said: "It is the noise of a chariot under a king. And he shall be 
a mighty king. As the sun shineth among the stars of heaven, so 
shall he shed on earth miracles and marvels that can not be told." ^^ 

When he was at Clonard, and would go out to study in the 
silence of the woods, tradition says that a stag used to come and 
lie down in front of him, presenting its horns for a reading stand 
on which he laid his book whilst he read. 

After Clonard he went to Aran to study under St. Enda. While 
studying there he used to thrash the corn for the community; but 
they had to take this office from him, because he gave of the corn 
so lavishly to the poor that he often left the students and the com- 
munity hungering. When he was leaving Aran he had vision of a 
tree which grew up in the middle of Erin and sheltered all the land. 
Its branches bent with load of fruit, wherefrom all the birds of 
the air came to eat Enda read the vision for him: "That tree 
is thyself. All Erin shall be filled with thy name, and sheltered 
by the grace that will be in thee. And many from all parts will 
be fed by thy prayers and fastings. Go, in God's name, and found 
thy church on the Shannon's banks." 

Before Ciaran put his foot in his boat to sail away from Enda 
and Aran, he knelt him down upon the strand to get his teacher's 
parting blessing. And the grieving Enda, as he would give it, broke 

^° On a certain day Ciaran was sowing seed at Iseal-Chiarain. A poor man 
asked him for alms. Garan threw a handful of grain into his breast, and it turned 
immediately into gold. King Angus, son of Crimthann, sent two horses and 
chariots to Ciaran, and Ciaran gave them to the poor man for the gold, and the 
gold turned into grain immediately, and the field was sown with it after, so that 
not in the whole territory was there corn better. 



202 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

down and wept — and was gently chided therefor by his brethren. 
"Oh, my brothers," said Enda, "why should I not weep; this day 
our Island has lost its rarest flower." 

He went to the place where he had been directed by Enda. He 
first stopped at Ard Mantain, a beautiful and fertile spot, on the 
river banks, which attracted him much. But on consideration he 
said: "No, not here may I found my church. Here indeed are 
the world's riches in plenty, but from such a place the souls going 
to heaven would be few." He next stopped at Ard Tiprait, a 
place unattractive and with soil unyielding. "Here let us remain," 
he said to his companions, "for many souls will ascend to Heaven 
from this spot." That was Saturday, January 23rd, 540. In that 
place and on that day he blessed and drove the first post. When 
he was making his preparations for this there appeared upon the 
scene an outlaw — Diarmuid, the son of Fergus Kerbeoll, who was 
hiding from the High King's armies that sought him. This Diar- 
muid enthusiastically aided the young cleric in fixing the first post 
of his church. Turning to the faithful one who was hunted, Ciaran 
then said : "Though to-day thy followers are few, to-morrow thou 
wilt be High King of Eirinn." And his words were fulfilled, for 
the powerful Ard-Righ of later days, Diarmuid O'Carroll, was 
no other than the outlaw friend of Ciaran. Ciaran had his church 
finished on May 9th, of the same year; and then his community and 
school began to grow. He lived for a very short time to enjoy 
and to foster both. But even in this short time new lustre was 
added to a name whose brightness had before been notable. 

In his very short life — for he died at the age of thirty-three — 
he had lifted many thousands toward God. He had evoked won- 
derful veneration throughout the land, and been a beacon on a 
mountaintop to the men and women of Eirinn. And the monastery 
and school which he had started, which he blessed with his name, 
and inspired with his spirit, was to be among the greatest of the 
great monasteries and schools of Eirinn; and down the ages the 
fame of his school was to exceed the fame of all other schools that 
Eirinn ever knew, and its scholars were to be noted for their wis- 
dom and their learning, both at home in Ireland, and abroad on 
the Continent. 

The last moments of the holy Ciaran are told with simple 
beauty in the Book of Lismore: 

"When the time of his decease drew nigh to holy Ciaran, in the 
little Church, in the thirty-third year of his age, on the fifth of the 
Ides of September, as regards the day of the solar month, on Satur- 
day as regards the day of the week: on the eighteenth as regards the 



THE CENTURIES OF THE SAINTS 203 

day of the moon, he said, 'Let me be carried to the little height above 
the church.' And when that was done he looked to the sky and 
the lofty air above his head. And saith he, 'Awful is this way above.' 
'Not for thee is it awful,' say the monks. 'I know not indeed,' saith 
he, 'aught of God's commandments I have transgressed, and yet even 
David, son of Jesse, and Paul the Apostle dreaded this way.' Then 
the stone pillow was taken from under him for his comfort. 'Nay,' 
saith he, 'put it under my shoulder.' . . . Then angels filled all be- 
tween heaven and earth to meet his soul. Then he was carried into 
the little church and he raised his hands and blessed his people" — 
and closed his eyes in Christ.^^ 

This Ciaran the Wright is not to be confounded with the other 
famous Ciaran, Ciaran of Saighir, Ciaran the Wright (the son 
of the Carpenter), with whom we have dealt, was of Ulster origin; 
Ciaran of Saighir was of Munster. He was born in Cork. It is 
he who, some contend, first introduced Christianity in the South of 
Ireland — before the coming of Patrick. Southern tradition is stub- 
bornly strong on this point, but there are many pieces of ciraim- 
stantial evidence that tend to prove him of the sixth century. Very 
great he was though, to judge from tradition — which after all, is 
one of the most certain proofs of true greatness. So great M^as he 
in the popular esteem that one legend has him as conceived of 
Heaven. A star fell into the mouth of his mother, Liadain, when 
sleeping: "thereof was born the wondrous birth, Ciaran of Saighir. 
And after his birth the angels of the Lord tended him, and the 
ranks of Heaven baptised him. And it is in Corcu Luidaich first 
that in Ireland the cross was believed in — thirty years before the 
coming of Patrick." 

He was a worker of miracles, was this great Ciaran. And in 
his love of the poor, the southern Ciaran rivalled his humbler name- 
sake. The Feilire of Aongus tells us, "Many cattle had Ciaran 



1^ Ciaran died of the great plague, the Buidhe Conaill, a kind of yellow jaundice 
which again and again ravaged Ireland (as well as the neighbouring countries in 
the sixth and seventh centuries). About the time of Garan's death it played havoc 
with the monastic communities. The schools were broken up, and the pupils sent 
home. In that visitation during which Ciaran died St. Ultan signalised himself 
by becoming father and mother to hundreds of children who were orphaned by 
the pestilence. Apropos of this is a truly quaint legend (recorded by Aongus) 
how that an invading fleet arrived at this time off the coast of Ireland. Diarmuid, 
who was then Ard-Righ, sent a messenger, with the alarming news, to Ultan, 
urging his intercession with God to avert this second calamity coming upon the 
suffering country. When the message was delivered to Ultan he was busy feed- 
ing his children But he raised against the fleet his unoccupied left hand, where- 
upon a storm arose and completely wrecked the fleet. And when they would 
thank Ultan for this he reproached them, "Shame it was not to have left me till 
my right hand was free. For, against the raising of my right, no foreign foe 
could ever after invade Eirinn." 



204 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

of Saighir, for there were ten doors to the shed for his kine, ten 
stalls for each door, ten cows for each stall, ten calves for each 
cow. ... So long as he was alive, Ciaran consumed not any kine, 
small or great, of their relish nor of their great produce; but dis- 
tributed to the poor and needy of the Lord. Moreover, Ciaran 
had fifty horses for ploughing and tilling the earth, but it seems that 
of what they tilled he ate not a single cake so long as he was alive. 
The following was his dinner every night: a little bit of barley 
bread and spring water as a drink with it, and two roots of sea- 
fern as relish for it. Skins of fawns was the raiment he wore. A 
bolster of stone was at his head when he used to sleep." 

This Ciaran was of the first order of Saints — a missionary, 
who did great work in bringing the people of Munster to Christ. 
And winning them for Christ, he won them also for himself. For 
his fame in Munster is imperishable. ^- 

One of the thousand traditions, which display the Irish sym- 
pathy with the animal world and show so many of the saints in 
intimate intercourse with the dumb living things around them, says 
that when Ciaran lived in the woods, worshipping God, a furious 
wild boar came to keep him company. And after that came a fox, 
and then a wolf, and a badger, and a fawn. And this curious com- 
munity lived together in loving harmony always. At least except for 
one little slip when the fox, getting inordinately hungry, stole the 
saint's sandals, and carried them off to make him a meal. But the 
badger, discovering the crime, indignantly followed, took the san- 
dals from the thief, and returned them to their owner.^^ 

Another famous southern saint of the early Church was the 
Kerryman, Brendan — known as the Voyager, or Brendan of Clon- 
fert — to distinguish him from his contemporary Brendan of Birr. 
Throughout the Middle Ages Brendan was known and famed in all 
corners of Europe, through the romantic account, then translated 
into every written tongue, of the wonderful voyage, extending over 
seven years, which he is said to have gone upon — a voyage, in the 

^- A legend, pro\an£!: — if proof be needed — that the Lord would not suffer His 
beloved Munstermen to be put to shame before outlanders from less favored prov- 
inces, tells how on a fast-day, Brendan of Birr, and Ciaran of Quain, once un- 
expectedly dropped in upon Ciaran of Saighair. Finding him with nothing eatable 
in the house, but a piece of meat, Ciaran, taking the meat, blessed it, and lo he 
had fish, honey and oil in plenty to put before these outlanders. 

13 Many ot the saints were noted for their love of animals, and for the animals' 
love of them. A flock of wild ducks followed St. Coleman, wherever he went. 
Brendan, the Navigator, had a pet crow: Colm Cille, a pet crane. When Molua 
MacOchae died all the birds and all the animals in Erin mourned. One bird whom 
St. Maelanfaid questioned as to the cause of its sad lamenting, told him that St. 
Molua had never harmed bird or beast in all his life — "So. not more do human 
beings grieve for him than the other animals, and the little birds that thou seest." 



THE CENTURIES OF THE SAINTS 205 

course of which, say some, he landed upon the Continent that is 
now America. 

Brendan was born in the last quarter of the fifth century, and 
lived nearly a hundred years. He studied his theology in one of 
the very early schools, St. Jarlath's famous school near Tuam. 
But before that he had been tutored by Bishop Eire — the same 
who, tradition says, on the night of the birth of this Brendan, be- 
held the woods by the home where the child was born, wrapt in 
one vast flame, which reached up to the skies, and the like of which 
he never saw before; and a manifold service of angels, in bright 
white garments, all around the land. And during his childhood it 
is said, a hind from Sliabh Luachra used to come daily, with her 
fawn, to give milk for the heaven-favoured child. 

It was this Brendan who, when going forth to his studies, was 
admonished by St. Ita " (his foster-mother), "Study not with 
women nor with virgins lest some should make mock of thee." 

But Brendan hardly needed the admonition, for his strenuous 
objection to feminine company is famed through the incident that 
happened when his foster-father. Bishop Eire, took the little lad 
Brendan, with him, when he went to visit the King and Queen of 
the territory. He left the lad in the chariot while he called upon 
the royal pair; and a pretty little yellow-haired princess entered 
the chariot to play with the boy, but was ignominiously ejected by 
him. Bishop Eire penanced him severely for his conduct — con- 
demning him to spend the night in the cave of Fenit. The penitent 
chanted psalms during the night which were heard for a thousand 
paces on every side. And, says the legend, about the cave troops 
of angels were seen up to heaven and down to earth, from night- 
falling to day dawn. 

It was in the middle of the sixth century (556) that he began 
his school of Clonfert — on an island in Lough Dearg, in the River 
Shannon — which was to be one of the famous schools of Ireland, 
and which in future generations was to boast for Abbot, one of 
Ireland's famous scholars, St. Cummian Fada." 

^* St. Ita, born about 480, founded the first monastery in Munster, at the foot 
of Sliabh Luachra. She was a great miracle worker. Died 570. 

15 It was in his church of Qonfert that Brendan had his vision of the heavenly- 
bird, which coming to him after Mass one morning, perched upon the altar, and 
so dazzled him with its sun-like radiance that he had to look away from it. 
Putting its bill behind its wing the bird sang for him. And, sweeter than any 
music ever heard in the world before, was the music that it made. He hearkened, 
entranced for twenty-four hours — which passed like a moment of time. And 
after that Brendan would not any more permit worldly music to be played in his 
presence; for he did not want to lose from his hearing the music of the people of 
Heaven. 



2o6 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

His famous voyage, accounts of which, in many languages, are 
still to be found in a dozen old libraries of Europe, was under- 
taken for purpose of finding the Land of Peace which the Lord 
had promised to all who did His will. "For Brendan had read in 
the Gospel, 'Every one that hath forsaken father and mother, sister 
and land for My namesake, will receive an hundredfold in the 
present and shall possess everlasting life.' And then the love of 
the Lord grew exceeding in Brendan's heart, and he desired to 
leave his land, his country, his parents, his fatherland. And he 
urgently besought the Lord to give him a land, secret, hidden, 
secure, a delightful land, separated from men." 

In answer to his persistent prayer, an angel of the Lord at 
length directed him: "Arise, O Brendan, for God hath given thee 
what thou soughtest, even the Land of Promise." Then he built 
his ship, and chose his company, and in the name of the Lord, set 
out upon the trackless ocean. It is noteworthy that the last man 
to join the boat's company, a buffoon and a notoriously sinful man, 
was the first to go to heaven. 

And Brendan's voyage, if it gave him not the Land of Promise, 
still gave to the world a wonderful romance, which through a long 
count of centuries never lost its fascination for the millions of the 
people of Brendan's land — not to mention other millions in other 
lands." 

Of the ship's company of Romans who, as was said, landed in 
Cork when Senach was at Iniscara a number probably went to 
the school of Enda in Aran. In the ancient graveyard there, was 
discovered a head-stone, commemorating "VII Romani" for the 
fame of Enda and his school travelled far. It is said that when 
Colm Cille visited Aran, he saw there the grave of an abbot of 
Jerusalem, who had made pilgrimage to Enda. 

Under this great Enda — who stood in the front rank of the 
saints of the second order — the Island home which he selected for 
his activities, his monastery and school, very properly earned the 
title of Aran na Naoim (Aran of the Saints). Tradition has it 
that in the graveyard, at the old church of Killeany there, lies the 
dust of an hundred and twenty-seven saints. Says the Feilire of 
Aengus: "It will never be known till the Day of Judgment the 

^8 It was a time of wonderful voyages : Only a few years before Brendan's 
voyage is fixed the time of the penitential voyage of the sons of O'Corra, who 
had been foster-children of the devil, and consecrated to hira, and had been his 
faithful servitors. Other two beautiful voyages of romance— of much earlier 
time — are the Voyage of Bran, and the Voyage of Maelduin. 



THE CENTURIES OF THE SAINTS 207 

countless hosts of Saints whose relics mingle with the sacred soil 
of Aran na Naoim." 

Enda was from near Loch Erne. He was of princely family. 
He passed a thoughtless youth, gay and sportive in the extreme. 
He never took heed for the morrow, much less thought he of the 
world to come. His conversion came as sudden as Paul's. It 
was wrought through his sister, Fanchea, a girl notably devout. 
She had a beautiful girl friend, with whom Enda fell in love — and 
whon^ he asked to marry him. He asked her on a morning when 
he was going off with other gay companions to the chase — and in- 
sisted that she should have made up her mind to consent by the 
time of his return. Upon his return Fanchea took him to her room, 
to see the maiden. From a couch there she drew aside a white 
coverlet, disclosing to him the girl's corpse. The maiden, who 
was like Fanchea very pious, and who feared for Enda in the 
thoughtless life he led, had prayed to God for guidance, and God 
had called her to Himself. "She chose Christ for her spouse," 
Fanchea said. 

Enda was «tunned — and sobered. That instant was born in 
him a new man. He cast off his former companions, forsook his 
former ways, and gave himself to study and prayer. He appears 
to have studied under Manchan the Master, a noted Irish teacher 
then in charge of the school of Candida Casa in Galloway. He 
founded his own monastery, and opened his own school on the wild 
island of Aran, in Galway Bay, in the late fifth century. So, it 
was one of the earliest of the noted monasteries and schools. 

Enda, here, came to have one hundred and fifty personal dis- 
ciples. The traditional accounts bring to this school a great many 
of the leading saints of the second order, many of those who had 
also gone to the school of Finian at Clonard. Healy says that they 
went to Enda's school after Clonard — when it came time to pre- 
pare for the novitiate of their religious life. So great were the 
numbers that flocked to Aran, from all parts, that Enda divided 
the Island into ten sections, each with its own religious house and 
its own superior — all, of course, under him. The remains of four 
of the different groups of churches still show on the island.^^ 

'^'' And in his Litany, after invoking the principal of Aran's Saints, Aongus 
adds : "And all the other saints here deceased whose numbers are so great as 
to be known to the living God only." 

^* Colm Cille is said to have visited Enda there. Some say that he studied 
under Enda for a while. Anyhow Enda and Aran were in high esteem with 
the great saint of lona. To him is attributed the touching Farewell to Aran, 
written when, with regret, he Was quitting its holy ground. 



2o8 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

The great monastery and school of Bangor took, in later days, 
that leading place which Enda's establishment on Aran had for so 
long held. The Bangor institution was the work in the mid sixth 
century, of the great saint of the men of Ulad, St. Comgall — who 
himself had studied under St. Finian at Cluain-Enach, in the Mid- 
lands, and also at the school of Clonmacnois. His Bangor school 
sent out teachers and missionaries, saints and scholars, in great 
numbers to Ireland, and to the countries of the Continent. As 
the Continental St. Bernard says, in his Life of Malachi (a tenth 
century successor of Comgall) : "There stood a most noble mon- 
astery, under the first father Comgelius, inhabited by many thou- 
sand monks, and the head of many monasteries. The place was 
truly sanctified, abounding in saints, abundantly fruitful to God; 
so that one of the sons of this holy congregation, Luanus or Evanus, 
was said to be the founder of an hundred monasteries. Its dis- 
ciples not only filled Ireland and Scotia, but swarms poured like a 
torrent into foreign countries." 

Comgall was upwards of forty years director of this hive of 
sanctity and learning, which arose on the shores of what we now 
call Belfast Loch, and where we are told three thousand students 
were at one time. He died about the year 600. Under May loth, 
O'Clery in his Martyrology sets down the anniversary of Comgall 
abbot of Bennchor Ulad (Bangor of Ulster) : "A man full of the 
grace of God and of His love was this man; a man who fostered 
and educated very many other saints, as he kindled and lighted up 
an unquenchable fire of the love of God in their hearts, and in their 
minds, as is evidenced in the old Books of Eirinn," 

The Three Sorrows of the Saints of Ireland were — the send- 
ing of Colm into exile; the cutting short of the life of Ciaran; the 
driving out of Mochuda from Rathain. 

Rathain was a monastery and school in the midlands, to which 
it will be remembered Ruman, the Virgil of the Gael, gave a third 
of the wealth he had, for his poem, extracted from the Galls of 
Dublin. It was founded by Mochuda — which name was a pet name 
for St. Carthach, a native of Kerry. As a lad herding swine in 
his native mountains, Carthach was turned to a religious life by 
hearing the monks of a monastery near his home, chanting the 
psalms — and which so entranced him that he remained spellbound 
on the spot all night. Having come to Rathain on a pilgrimage, 
accompanied by a body of his Kerrymen, he fell in love with the 
place and there settled, and founded his monastery and school 
which flourished and became famous. There gathered around him 
a large body of disciples from his own Munster. And the holiness 



THE CENTURIES OF THE SAINTS 209 

of the life they led was such that the angels are said to have come 
down and conversed with them. "It was Mochuda that had the 
famous congregation, consisting of seven hundred and ten persons 
at Rathain. And an angel used to address every third man of 
them." 

So great was the holiness of Rathain that powerful clerics of 
the Ui Neill race, in whose territory it was, grew jealous of it; and 
in the reign of Donal (mac Aoda), they got that Ard-Righ's 
command sent to Mochuda that he and his people should leave 
Rathain and return to their own province. The pathetic answer 
which Mochuda returned to this order was : "Since I have served 
God for many years in this place, and that now my death is nigh, 
I desire to end my days here. I shall not depart out of this place 
unless I am compelled to, lest men should think me inconstant of 
purpose. And I would be ashamed to become a wanderer in my 
old age." 

Since he would not go of his own free will, two princes of the 
royal line of the Ui Neill, Blathmac and Diarmuid, were sent, with 
a body of men, to expel him and his monks. Three times in three 
successive years the expedition against Mochuda set out, but each 
of the first two times there was a parley, and a year's respite was 
granted. The third time it was resolved that nothing should turn 
the drivers from their object. When they reached Rathain, Diar- 
muid was deputed to head a body of men into the church, and there 
arrest Mochuda and lead him forth. But, filled with veneration 
for this holy man, Diarmuid approached him with the utmost re- 
spect, expressed his sorrow for being there, and refused to act 
against him. Mochuda blessed him, prayed that the kingship of 
all Ireland might come to him — which it eventually did — and told 
him that for failing to act on his orders, he should be nick-named 
by his companions Diarmuid Ruadnaid, Diarmuid the Ruthful — 
"But that title shall yet become a glory to thee, and thy progeny 
after thee." And as Diarmuid the Ruthful he is known to Irish 
history ever since. 

After scoffing at and reproaching Diarmuid, his brother Blath- 
mac headed a body of men into the church, forced out Mochuda 
and his monks and drove them forth. 

When the mournful band, after weary wandering, reached the 
country of the Deisii (now Waterford) the King of the Deisii, 
with his attendants, came to meet the holy Mochuda, received him 
with reverence and honour, knelt for his blessing, placed himself 
under the saint's protection and besought him to choose where he 
would in this territory to build his chuich and fix his community. 



2IO THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

And the aged saint, strong In God's faith, and supported by 
God's strength, began his Hfework anew at beautiful Lismore — 
on the banks of that river which is now called the Black Water. 
Here he erected a new monastery and school, with whose fame not 
Ireland alone but likewise far foreign lands were destined yet to 
ring. For it was to give famed teachers and holy evangelisers to 
distant countries wherein the name of Scotia was yet but seldom 
heard. 

Tradition says it was in these days of the great saints — and by 
the action of some of the greatest — that ancient Tara of the Kings 
went down forever. It was Ruadan, one of the Twelve Apostles 
of Erin, who chiefly brought about that calamity. And it was 
Diarmuid, the son of Fergus (the friend of Ciaran the Wright) 
who, then reigning, provoked the calamity. 

King Diarmuid was striving against the position of independ- 
ence which the provincial and territorial kings assumed. He had 
issued an order commanding that all chiefs should widen their 
doors so that his spear, carried horizontally, could pass through. 
It is assumed that the chiefs had narrowed their doors for greater 
security against assault by the Ard-Righ's forces. Anyhow Diar- 
muid sent forth his sergeant to see if his order had been obeyed. 
When the sergeant reached the residence of Aed Guaire of Con- 
naught, he interrupted Aed's wedding feast, in the process of car- 
rying out the Ard-Righ's command — and Aed, drawing his sword, 
struck off the man's head. Then he sought sanctuary v/ith St. Rua- 
dan of Lorra. Diarmuid, who was almost as much enraged with 
the ecclesiastics, as he was with the chiefs, for their independence, 
violated the Saint's privilege of sanctuary, and took Aed Guaire 
from him for his punishment. St. Ruadan then journeyed to Tara, 
to curse Diarmuid, and it is said, was joined by many other lead- 
ing saints of the time, who made common cause with him. The 
saints first fasted against Diarmuid, and Diarmuid answered them 
with his fast. Every day the fasting ones gathered on the green 
before Tara, sang their psalms, and rang their bells against the 
king — till at length Diarmuid was broken in his fast, and gave in. 
Then he came forth from his hall in the morning, and joined the 
saints in their praying and singing. After that he reasoned with 
them, showed them the unwisdom of their course, and at length, 
carried away by his indignation, cursed Ruadan. Ruadan in re- 
turn cursed Diarmuid, and Diarmuid's dynasty that it might come 
to an end — which it did; and he cursed Tara that it might never 
more be the residence of a king. 

So tradition has it that after the year 563, through the cursing 



THE CENTURIES OF THE SAINTS 211 

of Ruadan, the wild birds roosted in the hall of Tara and the 
beasts of the field trampled on its hearth and made it their home." 

Stokes, Whitley: Lives of the Saints from the Book of Lismore. 

O'Hanlon, The Rev. Jno., Canon: Lives of the Irish Saints. 

Reeves, The Rev. Wm., D.D. ; The Martyrology of Donegal. 

Healy, The Most Rev. Jno.: Ireland's Ancient Schools and Scholars. 

MacGeoghegan, Abbe: History of Ireland. 

Keating's History of Ireland. 

Montalembert: Monks of the West. 

Colgan : Acta Sanctorum. 

Usher's Works. 

O'Curry, Eugene: Manuscript Materials of Irish History. 

Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish. 

Ware's Works (Edited by Harris). 

Four Masters, Annals of. 

Stokes, Whitley: The Feilire (Calendar) of Oengus the Culdee: Trans. 

Roy. Ir. Acad., 1880. 
D'Alton, Jno.: Prize Essay on Irish History (Proc. R. I. A.). 
Stokes, Rev. Dr. Geo. T. : Ireland and the Celtic Church. 

19 Some (like MacNeill) hold that the Kings of Meath still made Tara their 
home for some centuries after that date — and also that Ruadan never cursed it. 



CHAPTER XXVII 

LEARNING IN ANCIENT IRELAND 

When long ago the English poet Spenser, in his "State of Ire- 
land" set down: "For it is certain that Ireland hath had the use 
of letters very auntiently and long before England; that they had 
letters auntiently is nothing doubtful, for the Saxons of England 
are said to have their letters and learning, and learned men, from 
the Irish" — he was possibly not aware that even for centuries be- 
fore the English began to value learning, and in shiploads flocked 
to Ireland to obtain it, Ireland's valleys were dotted with schools, 
and her hillsides hummed with studying scholars. Babington in 
his Fallacies of Race Theories says that in the sixth century, "the 
old culture lands had to turn for some little light and leading to 
that remote and lately barbarous land" (Ireland). 

Says the medievalist, Arsene Darmesteter: "The classic tradi- 
tion, to all appearance dead in Europe, burst into full flower in the 
Island of Saints. The renaissance began in Ireland seven hundred 
years before it was known in Italy. And Armagh, the ecclesiastical 
capital of Ireland, was at one time the metropolis of civilisation." 

And our own Doheny puts it as gracefully as truthfully (in his 
Memoir of Keating) : "The early literary history of Ireland stands 
out distinct from that of any other country of Europe. While the 
revel of the Goth profaned the Roman forum and he stabled his 
steeds in the Coliseum, the pilgrims of learning from every dark- 
ened land found shelter, sustainment, and inexhaustible sources of 
information, in Ireland." 

The late Professor Zimmer, most eminent of Celtologists, states 
in his remarkable little work. The Irish Element in Mediaeval Cul- 
ture : 

"Ireland can Indeed lay claim to a great past; she can not only 
boast of having been the birthplace and abode of high culture in the 
fifth and sixth centuries, at a time when the Roman Empire was 
being undermined by the alliances and inroads of German tribes, 
which threatened to sink the whole Continent into barbarism, but 
also of having made strenuous efforts in the seventh and up to the 

212 



LEARNING IN ANCIENT IRELAND 213 

tenth century to spread her learning among the German and Ro- 
mance peoples, thus forming the actual fountain of our present con- 
tinental civilisation." 

It is interesting to speculate upon the certain antiquity and 
activity of that learning as far away as the sixth century, when it 
would give fruitful soil for the planting of such abiding tradition 
as that of the fall of the book-satchels^ at the death of Longarad, 
"master of study and jurisprudence, history and poetry." 

"This is said," says Aongus in the Feilire, "that on the night 
of Longarad's death Ireland's book satchels and her Gospels, and 
books of instruction fell from their shelves, as if they understood 
that never again would there come any one like Longarad. 

"Lon is dead (Lon is dead) ; 

To Cill Garad it is a great misfortune ; 

To Eirinn with its countless tribes; 

It is a destruction of learning and of schools. 

"Lon has died (Lon has died) ; 

In Cill Garad great the misfortune; 

It is a destruction of learning and of schools. 

To the Island of Eirinn beyond her boundaries," 

One tradition even has the book satchels of lona falling on 
this grievous night. They fell in the cell of Colm Cille, who, with 
the vision of the saint, exclaimed, "Longarad, master of every art 
in Ossory, is dead." "Long may it be till that comes true," ex- 
claimed the shocked Baithin. To which the impetuous Colm an- 
swered: "Misbelief be in thy successor." 

Most of the Irish scholars and Continental students of Celtic 
lore, like Zimmer, agree that when Patrick came, in the early part 
of the fifth century, he found there such a plenitude of learning 
and learned men as necessitated a background of previous centuries 
of educational progress. When the reputation has descended to 
us of at least two most notable pre-Patrician Irish scholars on the 
Continent, it is a practical conclusion that there were dozens of 
others abroad also, whose memories have been submerged in the 
sweep of the ages. And, interchange of the cream of foreign learn- 
ing with native Irish learning on Irish soil must have occurred with 
frequency, in the ages immediately succeeding Patrick, if we accept 
the learned Petrie's conclusion (in his Inquiry into the Origin and 

1 The polaires or leathern cases in which the volumes of those days were 
kept — hung upon the walls. 



214 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Uses of the Round Towers of Ireland) that "Crowds of foreign 
ecclesiastics, Egyptian, Roman, Italian, British and Saxon, flocked 
to Ireland, as a place of refuge, in the fifth and sixth centuries. 
Of such emigration there can not possibly exist a doubt." 

And then there was the exchange of Irish with Continental 
learning which occurred as a result of the many and great pilgrim- 
ages that in Ireland's earliest Christian days were constantly being 
made to Rome and to the Holy Land by crowds of Erin's faithful. 
These pilgrimages sometimes extended over years, ^ the pilgrim fre- 
quently making wide detours for purpose of visiting temples of the 
famous living, and shrines of the hallowed dead — and often so- 
journing for months and seasons in the neighbourhood of a famous 
preacher and teacher, or at institutional centres of piety and 
learning. 

Besides the dozens of incidental references to such with which 
the ancient records teem, Petrie cites the testimony in the famous 
Litany of Aongus Ceile De: "The three times fifty canoes full of 
Roman pilgrims who settled in Ui Mele, along with Notal Nem- 
shenchaid and Cornutan, iiivoco in auxiUiim meiim per Jesum Chris- 
tum, etc. The other thrice fifty pilgrims of the men of Rome and 
Latium who went into Scotia, invoco in auxilium meum per Jesum 
Christum. The thrice fifty Gaedhils of Eirinn, in holy orders, each 
of them a man of strict rule, who went in one body into pilgrimage, 
under Abban, the son of Ua Cormaic, invoco in auxiliuvi meum 
per Jesum Christum," etc. 

Within two centuries after Patrick, George Stokes (Knowledge 
of Greek in Ireland) shows that in the very centre of the bog of 
Allen, in Durrow, there was "a wide range of deep learning, chron- 
ological, astronomical, and philosophical." And Joyce says that 
the earliest of the seventh or eighth century glosses, published by 
Zeuss, testify to the fact that "the written language of the Irish 
was then fully developed and cultivated, with a polished phraseology 
and an elaborate system of grammar, and having fixed and well 
established written forms for all its words, and for all the rich in- 
flections." 

It was Zimmer's opinion that at least the classical learning for 
which Ireland in those very early centuries became noted, Latin 
and Greek, were brought there by the many learned people from 
Gaul who fled to Ireland, the haven of refuge from the overwhelm- 
ing tide of barbarism, which was sweeping Europe in the fifth 

2 An embassy sent from the Irish ecclesiastics to Rome, in 631, was three 
j'ears absent — and such embassy, naturally, did not journey with the same leisure 
as did pilgrims. 



LEARNING IN iVNCIENT IRELAND 215 

century. But the fact that these learned ones should flock to Ire- 
land is in itself partial proof that the fame of Ireland #ien as a 
home of learning must have been fairly well established. The 
brilliance of her beacon must have beckoned these affrighted ones, 
and the repute of her schools and scholars been ringing in their 
ears. Whether or not it was those very early scholar refugees, 
in those early ages, who brought some knowledge of Greek into 
Ireland, in addition to Latin, M. Darmesteter expresses his aston- 
ishment at finding, a couple of centuries later, Greek taught in Ire- 
land when it had become forgotten elsewhere, and when even such 
a noted scholar as Pope Gregory the Great was ignorant of it. 
But Zimmer acknowledges that in Ireland, "the standard of learn- 
ing was much higher than with Gregory and his followers. It was 
derived without interruption from the learning of the fourth cen- 
tury, from men such as Ambrose and Jerome. Here also were to 
be found such specimens of classical literature as Virgil's works 
among the ecclesiastical writings, an acquaintance with Greek au- 
thors as well, besides the opportunity of free access to the very 
first sources of Christianity." "The knowledge of Greek," says 
Professor Sandys in his History of Classical Scholarship, "which 
had almost vanished in the west was so widely dispersed in the 
schools of Ireland that if any one knew Greek it was assumed he 
must have come from that country." 

And the eminent Celtologist, De Jubainville, talking of the 
Irishman, Columbanus, who, in the sixth century, was evangelising 
and teaching in Burgundy and Lombardy, says : "We only need 
to glance at his writings to be at once convinced of his wonderful 
superiority over Gregory and the Gallo-Roman scholars of his 
time." 

As early as the fifth century, scholars from Wales, Cornwall, 
Brittany were coming to Ireland for schooling; or were, at home, 
receiving tuition from the Irish schoolm.aster who had even then 
begun to travel as an educational missionary. Lannlgan (in his 
Ecclesiastical History of Ireland) tells us that the Welsh historian, 
Gildas, came to Ireland, probably in the middle or end of the fifth 
century, "to perfect himself in philosophy and theology." He at- 
tended several schools there, and finally, according to his country- 
man, Caradoc, became a teacher at the school of Armagh. He re- 
turned to Wales when he heard of his brother being killed by King 
Arthur. Gildas' Welsh contemporary, St. Caradoc (who was Irish 
on his mother's side), attended as a boy the celebrated school of 
Caer, in Monmouth, taught by the Irishman, St. Tathj£us. Petrocus 
from Cornwall was studying the Scriptures in Ireland for twenty 



2i6 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

years. The Breton St. Paternus was some time in Ireland; and his 
father Petranus retired to lead a holy life in Ireland — in the be- 
ginning of the sixth century. 

Then we have the testimony of the Venerable Bede, the Saxon 
ecclesiastical historian, who, writing in the very shadow of the time 
of which he spoke, and describing the great plague of 664, says : 
"This pestilence did no less harm in the neighbouring Island of 
Ireland. Many of the nobility, and of the lower ranks of the Eng- 
lish nation were there at that time, who in the days of Bishops 
Finan and Colman, forsaking their native land, retired thither, 
either for the sake of divine studies, or of a more continent life; 
and some of them presently devoted themselves to the monastical 
life; others chose rather to apply themselves to study, going about 
from one master's cell to another. The Scots (Irish) willingly 
received them all, and took care to supply them with food, as also 
to furnish them with books to read, and their teaching, gratis." 

Patrick and his followers founded Christian schools to super- 
sede those of the Druids. Patrick's school of Armagh became one 
of Ireland's greatest — attended at a later time by (says Keating) 
as many as seven thousand students. This school was a favourite 
resort of the Saxons, who had in the city their own quarter, called 
Trian Saxon. Ibar of Beg-Eire and Ailbe of Emly, Patrick's con- 
temporaries, and his convert Mochae the swineherd of Oendrum, 
St. Fiach of Sletty, Olcan of Dercan, St. Mochta of Louth amongst 
others, had each his school in Patrick's day. 

Together with crowds of lesser ones, then followed the noted 
schools of Colman at Dromore, Enda at Aran, Jarlath near Tuam, 
Finian at Moville, the greater Finian at Clonard, Comgall at Ban- 
gor, Ciaran at Clonmacnois, of Kevin at Glendalough, of Senan at 
Inniscathy, of Brendan at Clonfert, of Mobi at Glasneven, of Fin- 
bar at Cork, of Fachtna at Ross, of Finan at Innisfallen, of Colm 
at Iniscaltra, of Carthach at Lismore — and numberless others — 
at Roscrea, Slane, Cashel, Inisbofin, Kildare, Limerick, Fore, etc., 
all of such importance that their fame has come down to the pres- 
ent day. And again and again the records and traditions intimate 
that several of these schools had thousands of scholars in attend- 
ance. We are told that there were two thousand students at Kevin's 
school at Glendalough, three thousand at Finian's school at Clon- 
ard; three thousand at the school of Comgall at Bangor^ — and that 
Clonmacnois at the height of its fame was attended by between six 
thousand and seven thousand students. 

So famous and great did the school of Clonmacnois become 
that many of the leading families of Ireland had there each its own 



LEARNING IN ANCIENT IRELAND 217 

cathedral, or church, mortuary chapel, round tower, or burial 
place. And there the dust of students representing every clan in 
Ireland, and many a people oversea, mingle underneath the green 
sod of the old cemetery. 

There is a fine poem by an Irish bard, O'Gillan, finely 
translated by Rolleston, on: 

THE DEAD AT CLONMACNOIS 

In a quiet watered land, a land of roses, 

Stands Saint Kieran's city fair: 
And the warriors of Erin in their famous generations 

Slumber there. 

There beneath the dewy hillside sleep the noblest 

Of the clan of Conn, 
Each below his stone with name in branching Ogham 

And the sacred knot thereon. 

There they laid to rest the seven Kings of Tara, 

There the sons of Cairbre sleep — 
Battle-banners of the Gael, that in Kieran's plain of crosses, 

Now their final hosting keep. 

And in Clonmacnois they laid the men of Teffia, 

And right many a lord of Breagh; 
Deep the sod above Clan Crede and Clan Conaill, 

Kind in hall and fierce in fray. 

Many and many a son of Conn, the Hundred-Fighter, 

In the red earth lies at rest; 
Many a blue eye of Clan Colman the turf covers, 

Many a swan-white breast. 

Ireland had now truly become, as described by one of the an- 
cients, "a hive of learning" : the hum of the scholars in this land 
of lore was as the hum of the bees on the flowery hillsides in June. 
There was no corner of the Island, convenient or remote, and even 
off to the scattered islets of the ocean, but had its centre of learning, 
to which came alike youth and age, noble and simple — and to which 
thronged not Irish only, but flocks of foreigners also — from Britain 
and from the Continent of Europe, all thirsting to drink at the 
fountains that so lavishly gushed, and the streams that so plenti- 
fully flowed, in the Island of the West. 

One of the early writers records that when, in neighbouring 
countries, a man of studious habits, was for a time missed from 



2i8 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

his usual haunts, it was concluded that he had gone to Ireland to 
seek education. All of the great schools had their groups of for- 
eign students, who for the most part, were not only educated gratis 
but lived on the hospitality of the people. We may of course as- 
sume that this refers to the bulk of foreign students who, not lav- 
ishly endowed with wealth, sought learning for learning's sake. 
We may conclude that such of the foreign nobility as came to Ire- 
land seeking learning just as an added grace and accomplishment, 
paid their way — like Dagobert the Second of France, who in 656 
was brought (by the Bishop of Poitiers) to be educated at Clonard. 
And indeed the Brehon law, which, touching upon almost every 
condition and circumstance of life in Ireland, lays down the rule 
for teachers and pupils incidentally confirms this — as already shown 
in the Brehon Law chapter. 

Almost all of the greatest, most notable schools of the olden 
days in Erin grew up incidentally, around the residence of a great 
teacher. Wherever such a noted man settled thither came students, 
who seemed to have been continually wandering over the land, 
seeking masters. First came a few who erected their little huts or 
bothies close to the hut or the residence of him, the scholar, from 
whom they expected to absorb knowledge. Soon came a few more, 
and still others followed. If the master's qualities, his knowledge, 
his ability, his aptness in imparting instruction, held those who first 
came, that fact was quickly known throughout the land, and quickly 
crowds were flocking there. Sometimes the instruction was given 
in the open; sometimes under cover. Largely the youths read for 
themselves — under direction of the master, who laid down the gen- 
eral scheme for them, and to whom they resorted for enlightenment 
when they met with a problem impossible of solution by themselves 
or their more advanced fellows. Oftentimes students accompanied 
a teacher upon a journey, barkening to his words, observing his 
actions, and absorbing knowledge from him as they went. 

A pupil who was instructed gratis, was entitled to work for his 
tutor. Likewise it was the law that to his tutor should go the first 
fee earned by such student, when he had graduated into a profes- 
sion. 

In the eyes of the law, any one who insulted or assaulted a stu- 
dent was guilty of insult or assault to the teacher. It was to the 
teacher that the fine was paid for such misdemeanour. 

Naturally a powerful bond of affection sprang up between mas- 
ter and pupil — a bond that throughout life was never broken. 
When old age incapacitated him, the master, if he did not belong 
to a community, which naturally would care for him, was looked 



LEARNING IN ANCIENT IRELAND 219 

after and provided for by his former pupils. Not only was this 
a matter of love, but it was a matter of law, also. In the Brehon 
laws it is laid down that pupils are responsible for the comfort and 
well-being of their master, in his need and in his age. In the an- 
cient Contest of the Two Sages (Acallam na da Suach) Neide, in 
enumerating the dire woes that will come over Erin as the end of 
the world nears, says that pupils will neglect to provide for their 
tutors in their old age.^ 

Of course it is to be understood that in Ireland any more than 
in other learned countries of the early ages, the mass of the people 
was not educated. All who desired it could get an education, and 
naturally the students came chiefly from the leisured class and the 
professional class. Among the body of the people, it was only the 
exceptionally bright and ambitious, who, shaking them free from 
the fetters of tradition, bade good-bye both physically and intellec- 
tually to their kith, and set out as a Scolaire bocht (poor scholar) 
to seek education. Yet then, as now, some of the most noted schol- 
ars sprang from the soil. 

The learned scholar and noted abbot, St. Adamnan (of Tir- 
Conaill and lona) is an interesting illustration of this. From an 
ancient manuscript account of the reign of Finachta the Festive 
who was Ard-Righ in the last quarter of the seventh century, 
O'Curry tells the story of the origin of the famous friendship which 
existed between the Ard-Righ and the saint. When Adamnan was 
a poor scholar at Ciaran's school of Clonard, he was one day 
carrying home on his back, a jar of milk, when a cavalcade, coming 
up behind, made him jump to one side, strike his toe, fall and 
smash the jar. Weeping and grieving, and with a bit of the broken 
jar still hanging over his shoulder he ran alongside the cavalcade, 
till a great man who was the centre of the group saw and pitied 
the grieving lad, and stopped the cavalcade to question and console 
him. Tenderly he spoke to the grieving youth. "We will make 
thee happy again, for we have sympathy with the unfortunate and 
the powerless. Thou shalt receive, O student, satisfaction from 
me." "Oh, good man," said Adamnan, "I have cause to be 
grieved, for there are three noble students in one house, and there 
are three lads of us who wait upon them, and what we do is, each 
one In turn goes around the neighbourhood to collect support for 
the other five, and It Is my turn to do so this day; but what I had 

8 "Instruction without reservation, correctness without harshness, are due from 
the master to the pupil, and to feed and clothe him during the time he is learn- 
ing," says the Brehon laws. "To help him against poverty and to support him in 
old age ; these are due from the pupil to the tutor." 



220 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

obtained has been lost, and what is more unfortunate the borrowed 
vessel has been broken, while I have not the means of paying for 
it." The simple youth won the heart of the great man, who turned 
out to be the Ard-Righ, Finachta, who became his friend and 
patron from that day forward. 

While most of the noted schools whose fame has come down 
to us from those early ages, were ecclesiastical, there certainly were, 
side by side with them in Ireland, a host of lay schools also, which 
had been founded and painstakingly built up by great lay scholars. 
And sometimes lay scholars were employed as teachers in the eccle- 
siastical schools. The famous Colcu MacUa Dunechda, to whom 
the Emperor Charlemagne sent presents was a lay fer-leginn or 
chief professor in the school of Clonmacnois. And in later cen- 
turies MacCosse was the chief teacher in the monastic school of 
Ros Ailithir, in Cork; and the celebrated annalist Flan, chief pro- 
fessor in the school of Monasterboice. 

For one who desired to graduate in the highest rank of his 
profession, twelve years was the course of study — during which 
the diligent student, if he were successful, passed, step by step 
through the Seven Degrees of Wisdom — the details and particu- 
lars of which, and the course of study for them, are contained in 
the tract known as the Book of the OUams preserved in the old 
Book of Ballymote and in the Books of the Brehon Laws.* 

The Book of Ballymote tract gives the requirements, year by 
year, for the twelve years of the scholar's course — from a course 
of the elementaries up to the mastery of the six-score great ora- 
tions, and the four arts of poetry — "from the study of the smallest 
book called The Ten Words, up to the mastery of the greatest 
book, The Cuilmen." Also the requirements are set down for 
each of the Seven Degrees of Wisdom, from the first degree called 
Fochluc through the others, MacFiiinnid, Dos, Canna, Cli and 
Anriith to the final degree of Ollam — or in a monastic school, Rosai 
or Great Professor. 

O'Curry enumerates and particularises six grades of professors 
in the ecclesiastical school, with the acquirements of each — from 
the lowest grade, the Caogdach, up to the highest, the Drumcli 
(ridgepole), a master who knew the whole course of learning. 
When the latter ambitioned being fer-leginn, or chief professor in 
a college, he "had to be master of the whole course of Gaelic litera- 

4 A sequel to the Crith Gablach, in Volume IV of the Brehon Laws, and a 
law tract called the Small Primer, in Volume V, interestingly deal with these 
details. 



LEARNING IN ANCIENT IRELAND 221 

ture, in prose and verse, besides the Scriptures and likewise the 
learned languages." 

In the bardic or lay schools a prominent place on the program 
of studies is given to the tales and the poems of the seanachies 
and poets, of that day and of the previous ages. Each year was 
added to the course the memorising and the minute study and ex- 
pounding of a certain number of historic and romantic tales and 
epic poems. In the monastic schools, the Scriptures, theology and 
the Classics very largely took the place of the study of the tales 
and poems. The other usual subjects of study in both schools 
were, grammar, geography, history, hagiography, law, mathemat- 
ics, astronomy, philosophy, logic, rhetoric, music, art and metal 
work. 

The common languages of the schools were Irish and Latin. 
Archbishop Usher, who says that he himself saw in St. Caimin's 
(seventh century) Psalter positive proof of Hebrew knowledge, 
was under the belief that Hebrew was taught in the schools. 
George Stokes (supported by some other scholars) holds that 
Greek was well known to the Irish teachers. And such noted Irish 
scholars as Cummian the Tall, Aileran the Wise, Columbanus, and 
others, again and again show familiarity with the writings of the 
Greeks. Greek prayers, Greek glosses and Greek quotations are 
found in connection with various ancient Irish manuscripts, both 
at home and in the old libraries on the Continent of Europe. 

But with the Latin language all the Irish scholars of those early 
days show almost a like familiarity that they do with their own 
Gaelic. They were experts in Latin literature. The Latin classics, 
sacred and profane, they had at their finger-tips. They wrote in 
that language with a masterful ease and read in it voraciously. 

A single illustration, out of numberless one^s available, is the 
famous letter of St. Cummian (seventh century) written to Sege- 
nius, abbot of lona, in the Easter date controversy that then nearly 
rent the church.^ In this letter (preserved for us in Usher's Sylloge 

s Cummian, who is combating the Irish Easter, shows that an Irish embassy 
at Rome in 631, found the Romans celebrating on March 24th the Easter which 
would not be celebrated in Ireland until April 21st. The Irish continued cele- 
brating the old Roman Easter long after the Romans, by direction of Pope Hilary, 
had adopted the present (Alexandrian) method of fixing the date of the festival. 
This was the cause of the great paschal controversy, which, both in Irish com- 
munities on the Continent of Europe (as Columbanus' community) and at hom.e 
in Ireland, and with the Irish in Alba, was waged for a century. It was only in 
716 that lona, the last citadel of the Roman method, capitulated. It may be men- 
tioned that within two years after this capitulation, the Irish tonsure likev/ise. 
vvhich required the shaving of the whole front of the head, from ear to ear — 
yielded to the Continental tonsure, the shaving of the crown of the head. 



222 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Epistolarum Hibernicarum) there is displayed a wealth of classic 
learning, and an intimate familiarity with things Latin, Grecian, 
Egyptian, Hebrev/, that justly amazes the scholars of to-day — "a 
marvellous compilation," says Professor Stokes, "because of the 
vastness of its learning." Beginning with the institution of the 
Paschal Feast in Exodus (as Stokes points out) Cummian quotes 
commentators as Jerome and Origen, and many Fathers of the 
Church; discusses the calendars of the Macedonians, Egyptians and 
Hebrews; quotes the opinions of Augustine, Cyprian, Pachomius 
(founder of Egyptian monasticism), Gregory the Great, etc.; re- 
fers to the views of the Irish saints; and balances the decrees of 
the Councils of Nice and Aries. He gives the Hebrew, Greek and 
Egyptian names of the first lunar month and (says Healy) "re- 
fers to almost every cycle and emendation of a cycle that we know 
of — the Paschal cycle, and those of Anatolius, Theophilius, Diony- 
sius, Cyril, Morinus, Augustine, Victorius, etc." 

D'Arbois de Jubainville in the introduction to his Study of Cel- 
tic Literature, speaking on the subject of Irish classical knowledge, 
says of the early Irish missionaries and scholars in Europe: 

"What surprises us most about these Irish emigrants was that 
they knew Greek, and were probably the only people in Western 
Europe, then, who knew it. They have Gra^co-Latin glossaries, 
grammars, the books of the Bible in Greek. ... It was considered 
good taste among the Irish then, to mingle Greek words through- 
out the Latin text which they composed." 

In the library of Laon, France, there is a manuscript written 
by an Irish scribe in the last half of the ninth century, containing 
two glossaries of the Greek and Latin languages, some passages in 
Irish, and a Greek grammar. 

Dr. Healy, arguing from the evidence of the Lord's Prayer 
in Greek, found upon an Irish manuscript (which he says was prob- 
ably written in lona), expresses himself as convinced that Greek 
was taught by the Irish monks in lona, twelve hundred years ago. 
The Colophon, in which the scribe in those days often asked the 
readers' prayers, reads: "Pray to the Lord for me, Dorbenum." 
And Dorbene was an abbot of lona, second in succession after 
Adamnan, who died in 713. 

That astronomy was taught in Ireland in the early centuries of 
Christianity is evident from many of the old writings. And when 
we reach the eighth and ninth centuries, we find Ireland producing 
eminent astronomical thinkers, such as Fergal of Aghaboe, and 



LEARNING IN ANCIENT IRELAND 223 

Dungall of Bangor, of whose accomplishments we shall talk in the 
next chapter. In the commentary on the Senchus Mor is set 
down a good general description of the universe. From the Saltair 
na Rann, a collection of poems made about the year 1000, but many 
of which were then hundreds of years old, Joyce extracts a short 
description of the universe which gives us a good rough idea of 
the state of astronomical knowledge then: 

"The earth is stated to be like an apple, goodly, truly round. 
The names of the seven planets are given ('Saturn, Joib, Mercuir, 
Mars, Sol, 'Uenir, Luna') ; the distances are given of the moon, and 
the sun, and the firmament, from the earth: the firmament is round 
the earth as the shell is round the egg: the signs of the zodiac with 
their names in order, and the correct month and day when the sun 
enters each: the sun is 30 days 10^/2 hours in each sign: the five 
zones — north and south frigid, and two temperate, with the torrid 
zone between." 

Medicine was taught by physicians, in their own homes, from 
very early times, and physicians were, as we know from the an- 
cient legends, in great esteem from far beyond the dawn of his- 
tory. And in this, as in every other phase of Irish life, the old 
Brehons dealt with the physicians' privileges and obligations. With 
nice wisdom, they specified cases in which a fee was due from the 
physician to the patient — as when, either through want of skill, or 
neglect, he failed to cure a wound — in which case the doctor paid 
to the patient the same fine as would a man who inflicted the 
wound.^ 

Ancient traditions indicate that the Caesarian operation, and 
also trepanning, were performed by Irish surgeons in olden times. 

While ancient stories, poems, and traditions bristle with refer- 
ences to medical men, the Annals, beginning with a record, under 
date A. D. 860, of the death of O'Tinnri, "the best physician in 

^ A particularly wise provision of the laws affecting the sick, was that the 
patient must be shielded "from dogs, fools, and female scolds" — an injunction 
from which many a poor sufferer might be made to profit even to-day. 

He who unjustly wounded another had to pay sick maintenance for that other 
until he was cured : and he was responsible for the wounded one's being cared for, 
according to the provisions of the law. 

The ancient poems and stories show that the common bath was a matter of 
daily routine, in the lives of many of the old Irish. The so-called Turkish Bath 
was at the same time commonly used for the ailing. It is only in comparatively 
recent times that, in some parts of Ireland, the ancient Sweating Houses, which 
were once quite common, went out of use. Some of these old Sweating Houses 
are still to be seen, in various parts of the country. And Joyce points out that at 
Prague, and in Nuremberg and other parts of the Germanic countries, this kind 
of bath was denominated Romische-Irische Bader. 



224 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Ireland," give place to many prominent physicians/ henceforward. 

Musical tuition received great attention in ancient Ireland. 
Even as late as the ninth century, we find the Irishman Marcellus, 
after he had consented to remain at the old Irish foundation of St. 
Gall, making that school illustrious for its musical teaching, and 
for the world famous musicians which it turned out. Of the Irish 
music more will be said in a subsequent chapter. 

The big place that learning occupied In those days in the coun- 
try's life and in the people's esteem, is evidenced not merely by 
the lavish wealth of traditions of the schools, which have survived 
both the lapse of ages and the ruthless rule of the destroying con- 
queror,^ but also by the frequent references of the annalists to the 

^ As in the case of the other professions, that of medicine usually descended 
in the same families. Joyce mentions how that the O'Callanans were physicians 
to the McCarthys of Desmond ; the O'Cassidys to the MacGuires of Fermanagh ; 
the O'Lees to the O'Flahertys of Connaught ; the O'Hickeys to the O'Briens of 
Thomond, to the O'Kenncdys of Ormond, and to the MacNamaras of Clare. The 
O'Shiels were the physicians of the MacMahons of Oriel, and of the MacCoghlans 
of Delvin. Five hundred acres of land was the usual allowance to the physician 
of the chief, — and perquisites besides. He says "the surviving collection of old 
Irish medical manuscripts preserved in the libraries of London^ Dublin, and Ox- 
ford, present probably the largest such collection in existence, in any one tongue." 

An estimate of Irish physicians in comparatively modern days, is quoted by 
Joyce, from the Confessio Authoris of Van Helmont of Brussels, who wrote nearly 
three hundred years ago : "The Irish nobility have in every family a domestic 
physician, who has a tract of land free for his remuneration, and who is appointed, 
not on account of the amount of learning he brings away in his head from colleges, 
but because he can cure disorders. These doctors obtain their medical knowledge 
chiefly from books belonging to particular families left them by their ancestors, 
in which are laid down the symptoms of the several diseases, with the remedies 
annexed : which remedies are vernacula — the production of their own country. Ac- 
cordingly the Irish are better managed in sickness than the Italians, who have a 
physician in every village." 

And the following piece, quoted by Joyce, from the preface of an Irish medical 
manuscript of 1352, beautifully illustrates the singularly lofty spirit which actuated 
Irish physicians in all the ages : "May the merciful God have mercy on us all. 
I have here collected practical rules from several works, for the honour of God, 
for the benefit of the Irish people, for the instruction of my pupils, and for the 
love of my friends and of my kindred. I have translated them from Latin into 
Gaelic from the authority of Galen in the last Book of his Practical Pantheon, and 
from the Book of the Prognostics of Hippocrates. These are things gentle, sweet, 
profitable, and of little evil, things which have been often tested by us and by our 
own instructors. I pray God to bless those doctors who will use this book ; and 
I lay it on their souls as an injunction, that they extract not sparingly from it; 
that they fail not on account of neglecting the practical rules (herein contained) ; 
and more especially that they do their duty devotedly in cases where they receive 
no pay (on account of the poverty of the patients). Moreover let him not be in 
mortal sin, and let him implore the patient to be also free from grievous sin. Let 
him offer up a secret prayer for the sick person, and implore the Heavenly Father, 
the physician and balmgiver for all mankind, to prosper the work he is entering 
upon and to save him from the shame and discredit of failure." 

8 That learned antiquary, the Rt. Rev. Dr. Reeves (Protestant Bishop of Down), 
says: "We must deplore the merciless rule of barbarism in this country, whence 
was swept away all domestic evidences of advanced learning, leaving scarcely any- 
thing at home but legendary lore, and which has compelled us to draw from foreign 



LEARNING IN ANCIENT IRELAND 225 

death of men of learning — even to the scribes, who, for their skill 
in perpetuating the monuments of wisdom, commanded huge re- 
spect. In the sixth and seventh centuries the annalists begin to 
praise as scribes certain men whose passing they record. As, under 
date 587, we are told of the death of Dagaeus of Inniscaltra : 
"Scriptor librorum peritissimus." And under date 655 the passing 
of Ultan: "Scriptor et pictor." They begin then, also, to refer 
to the scholars and the schools. 

And when we come down to the days of the ravaging Dane, 
the books, because of their frequent destruction, begin to get no- 
tice from the annalist. During the Danish period the annals record 
nine different burnings of the great library of Armagh School, the 
Teach-Screptra (House of Writings). One such characteristic rec- 
ord of burning — though this time evidently by accidental fire — is 
the following, from the Four Masters : 

"Ard-Macha was burned without saving of any house in it, ex- 
cept the House of Writings only. And many houses burned in the 
Trians, and the great church burned, and the belfry with its bell. 
The other stone churches were also burned; and the old preaching 
chair, and chariot of the abbott; and their books in the houses of 
the students; with much gold, silver, and other precious things." 

The fame of many of the Irish scholars of those early centuries 
still survives — and, of some of them who have become world fig- 
ures, always will survive. Bangor gave the world the great Colum- 
banus, scholar extraordinary, preacher, teacher, evangeliser — Co- 
lumbanus, courted of good (Continental) kings, and fearless de- 
nouncer of bad — and remonstrant, too, with one of the greatest 
of Popes — the learned Columbanus, for whom, on his approaching 
the Eternal City "all the bells of Rome rang out." He, as we 
know from his biographer and friend Jonas, carried with him from 
Bangor, in addition to his great Scriptural and classical learning, a 
remarkable knowledge of grammar, rhetoric, geometry, divinity, 
and we may add poetry. 

Of this famous sixth century scholar we shall later speak at 
further length — as also we shall do of another alumnus of Bangor 
who won Continental fame, the astronomer Dungall, whose intel- 
lectual ability won him the favour and esteem of the Emperor 
Charlemagne; and who was by that King's grandson, Lothaire, ap- 
pointed in charge of the educational system in the city of Pavia. 

depositories the materials on which to rest the proof that Ireland of old was really 
entitled to that literary eminence which the national feeling lays claim to." 



226 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

And from the study-halls of holy Bangor, too, emerged in later 
centuries, another world figure, Marianus Scotus, who, when he 
had established himself in Germany wrote his Chronicle of the 
World. Bangor, of which the Saxon Jocelyn said, "It is a fruitful 
vine, breathing the odour of salvation, whose offshoots extend not 
only into the ends of Erin, but far over seas into many foreign 
lands, filling them with abounding fruitfulness." Bangor, the beau- 
tiful, whose praise is well sung in the ancient Latin hymn, the An- 
tiphonary of Bangor — property, most probably of Columbanus or 
Dungall, and discovered in Columbanus' monastery of Bobbie in 
Italy: 

*'0 BENCHUIR BONA REGULA 

"Holy is the rule of Bangor: it is noble, just and admirable. 
Blessed is its community, founded on unerring faith, graced with 
the hope of salvation, perfect in charity — a ship that is never sub- 
merged tho' beaten by the waves. A house full of delights, founded 
upon a rock. Truly an enduring city, strong and fortified. The 
ark shaded by the cherubim, on all sides, overlaid with gold. A 
princess mete for Christ, clad in the sun's light. A truly royal 
hall adorned'^ with various gems." 

Noted scholar of those very early days was Aileran the Wise, 
head of the school of Clonard, and who, along with other works, 
left to us the scholarly production, "The Mystical Interpretation 
of the Ancestry of Our Divine Lord." The Benedictine editors 
who republished it a couple of centuries ago (after finding the 
manuscript in the old Swiss-Irish monastery of St. Gall) say, "He 
unfolded the Sacred Scripture with so much learning and ingenuity 
that every student of the sacred volume, and especially preachers 
of the Divine Word, should find it most acceptable." To the 
scholarliness of this work and its author, Dr. Healy bears this re- 
markable testimony: "Whether we consider the style of the Latin- 
ity, the learning or the ingenuity of the writer, this work is mar- 
vellous. He cites not only Jerome and Augustine, but what is more 
wonderful still quotes Origen repeatedly, as well as Philo, the 
Alexandrian Jew. It shows, too, that a century after the death of 
the holy founder. Scripture study of the most profound character 
was still cultivated in the great school of Clonard." 

It seems to have been at the time that learned Aileran ruled 
the school of Clonard that Adamnan of Tir-Conaill, destined to 
be famed for his literary work, studied there — and as we have 



LEARNING IN ANCIENT IRELAND 227 

already seen, in the capacity of a poor scholar. Besides his Life 
of St. Colm Cille, which, from foreign scholars as well as Irish, 
has received a chorus of praise, as one of the best and most re- 
markable of ancient biographies, Adamnan left us also a book on 
the Holy Land, De Locis Sanctis. 

But probably a more remarkable man than any of the foregoing 
was the briUiant genius Ceannfaelad. "Undoubtedly one of the 
most eminent men of his age," O' Curry with good warrant says of 
him. He had been a warrior in his early days, and only turned 
scholar when, by a serious wound in the head, got in the battle of 
Magh Rath (Down) in 634, he was incapacitated for fighting. 
He was borne unconscious from the battlefield to Armagh, where 
he seems to have undergone a surgical operation — trepanning, some 
conclude — which not only restored his mentality but, it is concluded, 
made that mentality infinitely more vigorous than ever it had 
been. "His brain of forgetfulness," says the old writer, "was re- 
moved." 

To convalesce he came to Tuaim Bricin in Cavan — where there 
were three schools — of Classics, Law and Poetry. The tradition 
tells that while he was convalescing he interested himself and 
occupied his mind by frequently sitting in the schools and listening 
to the lectures and lessons. The memory of this man was so 
phenomenal that everything he heard he retained. And from this 
strange beginning and discovery of his ability, Ceannfaelad went 
onward till he came to be regarded as illustrious amongst the 
bright scholars of Ireland; esteemed a master by his contem- 
poraries and reverenced as a master by the scholars of Ireland 
down till to-day. There are preserved three works which are at- 
tributed to Ceannfaelad, a very ancient grammar of the Gaelic lan- 
guage, a book of the laws, and primer of poetry. 

Colcu, fer-leiginn, or chief professor at Clonmacnois, author 
of the Besom of Devotion, must have been a scholar of much dis- 
tinction, when he won the affection and devotion of Alcuin, the 
chief scholar at Charlemagne's court, and won tribute from that 
scholar, and from his master, Charlemagne. Usher, in his Sylloge 
Epistolarum Hibernicariim gives in full the letter of Alcuin to 
Colcu — which, by a reference, in it, is shown to be only part of an 
irregular correspondence kept up between the court scholar abroad 
and the scholars in Ireland. This letter addressed by Alcuin to 
"My dearly loved father and master, Colcu," complains that the 
writer has not for a long time been gratified by receiving any of 
Colcu's coveted letters — gives gossip of the Court, news of Euro- 



228 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

pean politics, and states that the bearer of the letter is likewise 
taking to Colcu, for the school of Clonmacnois, a present of fifty 
shekels of silver from Alciiin and fifty from the Emperor." ® 

Though he was of very much later date than the period we 
have been dealing with, we can not help referring to another dis- 
tinguished Clonmacnois man, the famous Tighernach, scholar, lin- 
guist and historian. O'Curry says of the Annals of Tighernach, 
"It is a composition of a very remarkable character, whether we 
take into account the early period at which they were written, the 
amount of historical research, or the judicious care which distin- 
guishes the compiler." These valuable Annals of Tighernach cover 
Ireland's history from 305 B. C. to the year of his own death, 
1088. "Tighernach," says O'Curry (in MSS. Material), "was 
undoubtedly one of the most remarkable of all the scholars of Clon- 
macnois. Elis learning appears to have been very varied and ex- 
tensive. He quotes Eusebius, Orosius, Africanus, Bede, Josephus, 
Saint Jerome and many other historic writers, and sometimes com- 
pares their statements and points in which they exhibit discrepan- 
cies, and afterwards endeavours to reconcile their conflicting testi- 
mony, and to correct the chronological errors of one writer by 
comparison with the dates given by others. He also collates the 
Hebrew text with the Septuagint version of the Scriptures." 

Since the subject of Clonmacnois induced us to leap to such a 
late date as the eleventh century, we may justifiably make passing 
reference to another remarkable scholar of late date also — but 
about two centuries earlier than Tighernach — the learned Cormac 
MacCullinan of Cashel, scholar, warrior, ecclesiastic and king — 
the most famous man of his time in Eirinn — and one, too, whose 
fame must have sounded on the Continent of Europe. Cormac 

^ Here is George Stokes' summary of this letter: "He begins his letter with 
telling Colcu the news of the day ; tells him how Charlemagne had converted the 
Saxons and the Frisians, some (as he naively expressed it) by rewards, and 
others by threats. He narrates how, during the previous year the Slavs, Greeks, 
Huns, and Saracens had been defeated by the master's forces. He describes a 
quarrel between Charlemagne and the Mercian King, Oflfa. He laments that he 
has not received any Irish letters for a considerable time, and continues : 'I have 
sent to thee some oil, which is now a scarce article in Britain, that you may di- 
vide it among the bishops, for man's assistance and God's honor. I have also 
sent fifty shekels to my brethren from the King's bounty; I beseech you pray for 
him; and from myself fifty shekels. For the brethren in the South I have sent 
thirty from the king and thirty from myself, and for the anchorites three shekels 
of pure silver; that they all may pray for me and King Charles, that God may 
preserve him to the protection of his Holy Church, and the praise and glory of 
His holy name.' " 

Aengus, in his Feilire praises as "a saint, a priest, and a scribe of the saints 
of Eirinn, Colcu, Lector of Cluainmacnois." It records of Colcu: "It was to him 
Paul the Apostle came to converse. He took his satchel of books at Moin-tirc-an- 
air, and it was he that pleaded for him to the school of Cluain." 



LEARNING IN ANCIENT IRELAND 229 

was not only a profound Gaelic scholar and commentator on the 
ancient obsolete language of the Gael, but was also a Hebrew, 
Greek, Latin, Saxon and Danish scholar. This truly great states- 
man, churchman, writer and ruler, was cut off in the year 903, on 
the bloody field of Bellach Mughna — on which disastrous day, by 
the way, fell many noted scholars. Such respect did the learjied 
Cormac command that even the enemy whom he fought on that 
fatal day, the monarch Flann Sinna, when the head of Cormac was 
carried to him that he might exult over it, "kissed it, and turned 
round three times therewith." 

The wisdom of this scholarly king was a heavenly boon to his 
kingdom of Munster. 

"Great was the prosperity of Ireland," says Keating, "during his 
reign, for the land became filled with the divine grace, and with 
worldly prosperity, and with public peace in his days, so that the 
cattle needed no cowherd, and the flocks no shepherd, as long as he 
was king. The shrines of the saints were then protected, and many 
temples and monasteries were built ; public schools were established 
for the purpose of giving instruction in letters, law, and history ; 
many were the tilled fields, numerous were the bees, and plenteous 
the beehives under his rule ; frequent was fasting and prayer, and 
every other work of piety ; many houses of public hospitality were 
built, and many books written, at his command. And, moreover, 
whenever he exacted the performance of any good work from others, 
he was wont to set them the example himself by being the first to 
practise it, whether it was a deed of alms, or benevolence, or prayer, 
or attending mass, or any other virtuous deed. It was the good for- 
tune of Ireland during that epoch, that, whilst he was reigning over 
Munster, the country was abandoned by whatever of the Lochlan- 
naigh (Danes) had previouslv infested it for the purposes of 
plunder." ^° 

1° The Will of Cormac, in verse, is of high interest as giving us a glimpse of 
what were some of the prize possessions of a man of his standing in those days — 

'Tis time my testament were made. 
For danger's hour approacheth fast ; 
My days shall henceforth be but few, 
My life has almost reached the goal. 

My golden cup of sacrifice, 
Wherewith I holy offerings make, 
I will to Senan's brotherhood, 
At Inis Cathaigh's sacred fane. 

The bell that calleth me to prayer, 
Whilst on the green-robed earth I stay; 
Forget not with my friend to leave 
At Conall's shrine, where Forgas flows. 



230 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Unfortunately, during the Danish period of destruction great 
literary treasures of the very early days, and many of the works 
of the early scholars, perished — and some were carried off to 
Scandinavia. Vast numbers of books, too, were carried far and 
wide over the Continent of Europe by the travelling Irish scholars 
and missionaries in the centuries when they were spreading the light 
in Europe. 

After the Viking tyranny had been broken by Brian Boru, 
that monarch found it necessary to do all in his power to provide 
the country with fresh literature, getting the old books rewritten 
or copied, and sending emissaries abroad for new ones. It is in 
the century succeeding the Battle of Clontarf, fought on Good 
Friday, 1014, that were made the great collections of Irish litera- 
ture which we now have: the Book of the Dun Cow about iioo, 
and the Book of Leinster about 50 years later. It is these books 
and others like them " that contain (mostly in the language of the 
period, but often shot through with the old Irish forms which the 
scribes forgot to change) these ancient poems and sagas that date 
substantially from pagan times, and give us such a wondrous in- 
sight into the past of the Celtic race in Ireland, and no doubt of 
the Celtic race upon the Continent also. 

My silken robe of graceful flow, 
O'erlaid with gems and golden braid, 
To Ros-cre, Paul and Peter's fane, 
And Cronan's guardianship, I leave. 

My silver chessboard, of bright sheen, 
I will to Uladh's royal chief ; 
My well-wrought chain of faultless gold. 
To thee, Mochuda, I bequeath. 

Take then my amice and my stole, 
And take my manuple likewise ; 
To Lenin's son, who lies at Cluain, 
To Colman, who has found his bliss. 

My psalter of illumined leaves, 
Whose light no darkness e'er can hide — 
To Caisel I forever leave 
This potent gift without recall. 

And my wealth, I bequeath to the poor, 
And my sins to the children of curses ; 
And my dust to the earth, whence it rose, 
And my spirit to Him, who has sent it. 

^^ Such as those other famous ancient books — "The Lebar Brecc" (The Speckled 
Book), "The Yellow Book of Lecan," "The Book of Ballymote," "The Book of 
Lismore," etc., etc. — preserved in the Roval Irish .'Kcademv, and in Trinity College, 
Dublin. 



LEARNING IN ANCIENT IRELAND 231 

Healy: Irish Schools and Scholars. 

Stokes, The Rev. Dr. Geo. T.: The Knowledge of Greek in Ireland Be- 
tween A. D. 500 and 900. Proc. R. I. A., 1892. 

Zimmer: The Influence of Ireland on Mediaeval Culture. 

Jubainville, H. DArbois de: Le C3xle Mythologique Irlandais et la 
Mvthologie Celtique. 

O'Curry's Works. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

THE IRISH MISSIONARIES ABROAD 

And, during these several fruitful centuries succeeding St. Patrick, 
the story of the Race must concern itself not merely with the saints 
and the scholars who towered tallest in the nation in those days, 
and whose acts make the nation's most memorable history, but also 
with those other commanding Irish figures who, throughout this 
time, swarming forth from the Irish monasteries and schools, like 
bees from a hive, bore with them to distant shores the faith and 
the lore with which Ireland overflowed, and with knowledge, secu- 
lar and divine, blessed many peoples and brought them out of bar- 
barism. 

Says Dr. Wattenbach in his Congregations of the Irish Monks 
in Germany: "It was thus, when the whole world seemed Irre- 
coverably sunk in barbarism . . . the Irish went forth Into every 
part of the world," to spread Christianity and knowledge. 

Says Kuno Meyer (in his Introduction to "Ancient Irish 
Poetry") : 

"Ireland had become the heiress to the classical and theological 
learning of the western empire of the fourth and fifth centuries, and 
a period of humanism was thus ushered in which reached its culmina- 
tion during the sixth and the following centuries. For once, at any 
rate, Ireland drew upon herself the eyes of the world, as the one 
haven of rest in a turbulent world over-run by hordes of barbarians, 
as the great seminary of Christian and classical learning. Her sons, 
carn'ing Christianity and a new humanism over Great Britain and 
the Continent, became the teachers of whole nations, the counsellors 
of kings and emperors." 

What these loyal bearers of the lamp of knowledge and eager 
carriers of the cross of Christ did in the neighbouring nation of 
Britain, we shall glance at first — and then outline what was accom- 
plished by a typical few of the countless many who swarmed for 
centuries far and wide over Europe. 

232 



THE IRISH MISSIONARIES ABROAD 233 

Mainly from three reservoirs the faith and its accompaniment 
of learning was borne to the Britons — direct from Ireland — from 
Aidan's Irish monastery of Lindisfarne on Britain's northeastern 
coast — and from Augustine's Roman mission in Britain's southeast- 
ern corner. 

The latter, though last named, was the first to go with the bless- 
ing of faith to the Britons, but the two former succeeded in carry- 
ing the blessing over by far the greater portion of the field. That 
the work of the Roman missionary was circumscribed in its area, 
and its success limited, as compared with the work and the success 
of the Irish missionaries, and of Saxon missionaries who were pu- 
pils and disciples of the Irish, is acknowledged by the authorities 
who have written upon the subject. The English ecclesiastical 
writer, Dr. Lightfoot, Bishop of Durham, speaks thus on the sub- 
ject: 

"Though nearly forty years had elapsed since Augustine's first 
landing in England, the church was still confined to its first conquest, 
the southeast corner of the island, the kingdom of Kent. . . . Then 
commenced those thirty years of earnest, energetic labour, carried on 
by those Celtic missionaries and their disciples, from Lindisfarne as 
their spiritual citadel, which ended in the submission of England to 
the gentle yoke of Christ." 

Montalembert (in his Monks of the West) says: 

"The Italians, Augustine and his monks, had made the first step, 
and the Irish now appeared to resume the uncompleted work. But 
what the sons of St. Benedict could only begin was completed by 
the sons of St. Columba." 

And Dr. Reeves says: 

"St. Augustine arrived in England in 597 . . . but Christianity 
made little headway in the provinces until Aidan began his labors 
in Lindisfarne in 634." 

To the work done and the foundations laid by this Irishman, 
Aidan, the spread of Christianity to the bounds of Britain are 
chiefly owing. As Dr. Lightfoot says: "Aidan holds the first 
place in the evangelisation of our race. Augustine was the apostle 
of Kent, but Aidan was the apostle of England." 

Aidan came into England from Colm Cille's monastery of lona 
— by request of Oswald of Northumbria, who had got his faith 



234 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

and his education in Ireland. Bede records, "Many of the Scots 
came daily into Britain, and with great devotion preached the 
Word to those provinces of the English over which King Oswald 
reigned." 

In 634 Aldan founded the monastic community in Lindisfarne, 
or Holy Isle, off the Northumberland coast, which became a boun- 
tiful flowing fountain of faith for England. And Irishman after 
Irishman came there in succession to tend the fount. Aidan was 
succeeded by Finan, and Finan by Colman. And during three fruit- 
ful decades the propagation of the faith to England was directed 
by these men. They travelled and taught and preached, them- 
selves. And their disciples and their pupils spread themselves out 
over vast areas doing likewise. We are told that the pious Oswald 
himself humbly interpreted for them oftentimes, ere yet the mis- 
sionaries were well enough acquainted with the Saxon tongue to 
express themselves clearly in it. 

"It can be affirtned," says McGeoghegan, "that the Saxons of 
the Northern provinces were indebted to those three for the knowl- 
edge of the true God. Finan it was who converted Sigebert, King 
of East Anglia. and Panda, King of the interior provinces, with 
their courts. And he set his priests instructing and baptising their 
subjects." 

Besides the monastery at Lindisfarne, Aidan founded many 
monasteries and many churches in other places in northern Eng- 
land. Preaching, teaching, converting, baptising, he tirelessly occu- 
pied himself among these Saxons to whom he brought Christ. He 
won the veneration, the admiration, and the earnest love of all of 
them, noble and simple. The rich loaded him with gifts — which 
gifts he promptly distributed among the poor who needed them. 

Then many of those Saxons themselves who were going, as 
Aldhelm said, "in fleet loads to Ireland," to the schools and monas- 
teries there, brought back with them to their native land and propa- 
gated among their fellow countrymen the knowledge of the Scrip- 
tures, and the secular knowledge which they had absorbed under 
their holy masters in Eirinn. 

Leland tells us of St. Petrocus, renouncing the kingdom of Cum- 
berland, and for twenty years at Irish schools studying the Holy 
Scriptures and literature. 

Camden in his Brittania says: 

"Our Anglo-Saxons went at those times to Ireland as if to a 
fair to purchase goods. Hence, it is frequently read in our historians 



THE IRISH MISSIONARIES ABROAD 235 

of holy men, *He was sent to Ireland to school,' or 'He went to the 
Irish renowned for their philosophy.' " 

The royal court of Northumbria, in particular, where always 
were to be found Irish preachers and Irish teachers, and where, we 
are even told, Irish came to be at one time the court language, 
acted as the great conduit, through which flowed both the religion 
and learning of Eire for blessing the English people. The North- 
umbrian kings, Egbert and Oswald and Aldfrid^ (whose mother 
was Irish) spent a long time, all of them, at the Irish schools. 

"Edilvinus," says Bede, "was well instructed in Ireland and 
came back and was appointed bishop of the province of Lindisse." 
Agilberct, who was probably a Saxon, though some call him a 
Frank, studied theology in Ireland for several years, and became 
bishop of Paris. St. Chad, one of the Fathers of the Anglo-Saxon 
church, got his education in Ireland. And the English Willibrord, 
educated in Ireland, became the apostle of Saxony. 

The Irish bishop, Diuma, was the apostle of the Mercians, and 
after him the Irish bishop Cellach accomplished arduous work in 
the Mercian kingdom. The Irishman, Dicuil, was the apostle of 
the South Saxons. He founded the monastery of Bosanham. The 
Irish bishops, St. Sampson and St. Magloire, occupied in succession 
the See of York, Usher tells us. St. Ciaran, called by the Cornish 

iThis Aldfrid is said to be the author of the famous ancient poem in Irish, 
"Aldfrid's Itinerary" which is now best known in Mangan's translation — 

I found in Innisfail the fair, 

In Ireland, while in exile there, 

Women of worth, both grave and gay men, 

Many clerics and many laymen. 

I travelled its fruitful provinces round, 
And in every one of the five I found, 
Alike in church and in palace hall, 
Abundant apparel, and food for all. 

Gold and silver I found in money ; 
Plenty of wheat and plenty of honey; 
I found God's people rich in pity, 
Found many a feast, and many a city. 

I also found in Armagh the splendid, 
A'leekness, wisdom, and prudence blended, 
Fasting as Christ hath recommended, 
And noble counsellors untranscended. 

I found in each great church moreo'er, 
Whether on island or on shore, 
Piety, learning, fond affection. 
Holy welcome and kind protection, &c. 



236 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Piran, was the apostle of Cornwall. St. Cuthbert, a native of Lein- 
ster, was the patron of Durham. St. Fursa at Burgh Castle, in 
Suffolk, founded a monastery, from which centre the faith was 
radiated over that part of England. The Irish St. Moninna is 
patron of Burton-on-Trent. The Irish St. Bega established herself 
in Cumberland, at that place which is now called after her St. Bee's. 
Maeldubh founded the famous monastery and school at that place 
which is called after him Malmesbury — in 676 — an institution that 
not only gave the faith but also for long ages, through its teachers, 
gave the higher learning of those days to nobles from many parts 
of England, including Aldhelm (who made the complaint about 
Saxon youths continually streaming from the British shores to Ire- 
land of the schools). Glastonbury in the southwest of England 
was for a long time known as Glastonbury of the Gaels, because 
of the great Irish school that flourished there, a centre of evan- 
gelisation as well as education. At that school the Saxon, St. Dun- 
stan, studied (says William of Malmesbury) "arithmetic, geometry, 
astronomy and music, under Irish teachers." 

But during this time those eager Irish missionaries were, with 
ever-burning flames in their hearts, swarming north and south, east 
and west, over the Continent of Europe, preaching and teaching, 
baptising and building. From the monastic schools of Ireland 
thickly they poured forth, resigning forever family and friends, and 
associates and country — resigning crowns and kingdoms, sometimes 
— for the purpose of carrying the glad tidings of God's Word to 
all lands. And to all lands they went, from Arctic Iceland to tropic 
Africa, and from the Pyrenees to Palestine. 

If record had been kept of even a tithe of those who then left 
Ireland forever, to attend to their Master's work, we should have 
a roll of missionary heroes whose length would alike amaze and 
fill us with pride. But so common was their crowding forth, and 
so natural to them the undertaking, that the incident seemed too 
common and ordinary to waste good parchment and ink upon its 
setting down. Were it not that occasionally some Continental 
writer preserved to us the fact that the evangeliser of his country, 
his province, or city, was from Ireland, we, depending upon our 
own records, would be in almost complete ignorance of the proud 
fact (which fortunately every Continental scholar can now tell us) 
that from the end of the sixth to the beginning of the tenth cen- 
tury the little isle in the western ocean was the means of giving the 
Gospel of Christ to the vast tract of barbarian-swept Europe. In- 
deed, since for one such missionary the memory of whose Irish 
nationality has accidentally escaped the oblivion of the ages, the 



THE IRISH MISSIONARIES ABROAD 237 

natal record of twenty must have been lost, we can only conjecture 
hov/ truly dazzling would be the list of Irish missionaries and mar- 
tyrs on the Continent of Europe, if the records of all or even one- 
half had been spared to us. 

"At that time," says the French historian Allemand, "it was 
sufficient to be an Irishman to be considered holy and become the 
immediate founder of an abbey." 

In the brief account permitted us here, of early Irish mission- 
ary activities In Europe, we can only afford to glance at a few of 
the more prominent, therefrom to obtain a slight general idea of 
the whole. If we were to take one to represent them all, that one 
would undoubtedly be the earliest of all the notable ones, the de- 
servedly famous Columbanus — of whom the Benedictines, in their 
Literary History of France say: 

"The light which Columbanus disseminated wherever he went 
caused a contemporary writer to compare him to the sun in its 
course from East to West," 

And Odericus Vital!, In his Church History: 

"This father of wonderful sanctity laboured amongst the most 
zealous, he shone gloriously among worldlings by his miracles, and 
taught by the Holy Spirit, he established monastic regulations, and 
was the first to deliver them to the Gauls." 

Of course the memory of several Irish Christians on the Con- 
tinent before Columbanus came, Is accidentally preserved to us — 
such as the elder St. Sedulius, already referred to, who was teach- 
ing In Achaia. And Florentinus, of whom Usher tells us, whose 
festival is on the calends of December, who was Imprisoned In 
Rome, and who preached and converted many. 

St. Eliphius, Bishop of Toul, in the end of the fourth century 
was, says Abbot Rupert of Duitz (writer of Eliphius Acts) a na- 
tive of Scotia. - 

2 Usher says: "St. Eliphius, son of a king of Scotia, abandoned vast posses- 
sion; was dehghted to serve Christ the Lord God, in poverty. In the city of 
Toul together v^ith thirty-three of his faithful companions he was betrayed, thrown 
into prison, but by the goodness of God, was miraculously delivered in the night. 
After this he preached with constancy and fervour, and made a great harvest in 
the vineyard of the Lord. He converted and baptised in a short time four hundred 
persons. But the Emperor Julian, the apostate, being incensed against them, be- 
cause they boldly proclaimed the glor>' of Christ of whom he was envious, caused 
Eliphius to be arrested and had him beheaded." 



238 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Also St. Renan in the forest of Nevit in Brittany, in tiie latter 
part of the fifth century, and St. Sezin in Brittany, in the beginning 
of the sixth century (both referred to by Lannigan), were Irish. 
While at about the same time that Rome rang all its bells to wel- 
come our Columbanus, we have an Irishman, Augustine, labouring 
for God in Carthage. Augustine left us, in the Wonders of the 
Sacred Scriptures, a remarkable attempt, at so early a time, to 
reconcile science and revelation.^ 

But Columbanus was certainly the first typically Irish mission- 
ary on the Continent, of whose career we have pretty full and 
accurate details. Fortunately, only ten years after he passed away, 
his life was written by his follower, friend, and fellow-countryman, 
Jonas, abbot of Luxeuil in Burgundy. Columbanus was a Leinster- 
man, born in the year 543, and schooled first with St. Sinnell on 
Loch Erne — and next under Comgall at Bangor, on whose monastic 
rule he modelled the rule that he gave to his own monasteries on 
the Continent. At Bangor he made himself master of grammar, 
rhetoric, geometry, poetry, the Sacred Scriptures, Latin — and, some 
believe, Greek and Hebrew also. 

When, following the example of hundreds of other holy ones 
who had gone before him, Columbanus gave up all in order to 
carry Christ's Gospels to the heathen, he took with him twelve 
disciples (as was then the common practice of many masters who 
went forth) and set out through Britain, to the Continent of 
Europe. 

Columbanus' first signal success on the Continent was the con- 
version of Sigebert, king of Austrasia, whose heart the Irishman 
won as well as his soul — for Sigebert tried to induce the missionary 
to settle down close to his court (which was at Metz) offering him 
generous endowments if he did so. But not for Columbanus was 
the easy life. He came not to seek worldly favours but to toil for 
Christ. In the Vosges Mountains he settled, at a wild and barren 
spot called Anagrai. Here he and his companions lived upon 
herbs and roots, and sometimes, in their stress, ate the barks of 
the trees. By timely relief that seems miraculous, they were twice 
saved from dying of starvation. But the news of the piety, and 
beauty of the lives, of the wonderful men from Eirinn who had es- 
tablished themselves in this bleak spot, was carried far and wide, 

8 In the course of this work Augustine correctly details all the animals that 
ire to be found in his native Ireland. He also mentions the recent death of a 
amous man, Mancheas the Wise, in Central Ireland. An interesting paper upon 
■vUgustine's work, written by Dr. Reeves, is contained in Volume Vlt of the pro- 
ceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



THE IRISH MISSIONARIES ABROAD 239 

and mightily impressed the people of those regions, who began 
thronging to them, bringing also crowds of the sick and the infirm. 
And so completely won were they to their holy ways of life that 
many wanted to join their community — so that after a little time 
Columbanus and his companions had to quit their rude and cramped 
quarters at Anagrai and go further down the valley to Luxeuil, 
where they built a monastery that gave them more spacious quar- 
ters, and much better facilities for dealing with the streams of pil- 
grims which were constantly flowing to them from all sides. 

Here also they were in far better position to provide for the 
teaching of the students who had been pressing upon them, even 
before they had left Anagrai. A school grew up at the Luxeuil 
monastery, where the sons of the nobles of that country vied with 
each other for the privilege of becoming students, and becoming 
monks. 

So marvellously did their fame continue to spread, and their 
monastery and school to grow, that in a short time again they had 
to build still another — at Fontaines. And around these three Irish 
establishments, in the heart of the Vosges mountains, now centred 
both the intellectual and the religious life of all the eastern part 
of that country which is now France. "The fame of Columbanus' 
power," says Lannigan, "brought crowds." To that great school 
many prominent ecclesiastics of France owed their education. 

Yet life at Luxeuil was not one uninterrupted dream of peace. 
Two notable quarrels disturbed its serenity, and one of them finally 
resulted in driving Columbanus forth from the great institution 
v/hich with infinite patience and thought, he had founded, and with 
infinite soHcitude fostered. 

The neighbouring ecclesiastics assailed him and denounced him 
as a disobedient child of the church because his Vosges community 
celebrated the old Roman Easter — after the custom of the Irish — 
instead of the new, or Alexandrian Easter, which was now univer- 
sally observed on the Continent. Columbanus would not bow to 
the will of his antagonists. He held his own, and wrote some re- 
markable letters to the bishops, to Pope Gregory the Great, and 
later to Pope Boniface, defending himself. Pathetic, but at the 
same time noble, is that beautiful plea, to the Gallic bishops, of this 
man representing a little band who had exiled themselves for 
Christ's sake — "Let us live here in Gaul in a like peace in which 
we hope to live eternally in heaven. But if it be God's will that 
you should drive me from this wilderness, whither I have come so 
far for the sake of Jesus Christ, I shall say, with the prophet: 'If 
for my sake this tempest is upon you, take me up and cast me forth 



240 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

into the sea.' " AH he asked was to be left in peace to observe the 
festivals of the church as all his life he had been used to observe 
them, as all his countrymen had always observed them — as they 
had got them from St. Patrick. "Better comfort us poor strangers, 
than go on disturbing us," he writes to the bishops, when vexed by 
their continued annoyances — for they had now summoned him to a 
Council to answer for his crime of continuing to observe the Irish 
Easter. And as he knows that these bishops, who persecute him 
for his lack of a letter observance, have been themselves eminently 
lax in observing the spirit of many church ordinances, and that 
they have been more than lax in neglecting to hold Councils, when 
matters of far graver moment than his persecution calls for them, 
his Irish sarcasm comes into play. So he answers, congratulating 
them on the fact that they are going to hold a Council — and wishes 
that they would comply with the Canons and hold them oftener. 
The saint is all his life a typical Irishman, again and again display- 
ing the Irish qualities. He is frank and fearless; he never shrinks 
from a fight; he can be fierce as a lion, and gentle as the white dove 
that gave him his name. By his loving persuasiveness he could 
win alike the highest and the humblest. And by his terrible de- 
nunciation he made the tyrant tremble on his throne. He was 
possessed of infinite sweetness, and of infinite sarcasm; and to com- 
plete his Irishism he was undoubtedly gifted with that insinuating 
Irish quality which in recent days is dubbed blarney. For we find 
him when writing to Pope Gregory to defend himself against the 
bishops, taking occasion to compliment Gregory upon a recent pas- 
toral, and begging from him a copy of his commentary on Ezechiel 
— compliments which, coming from a notable scholar, admittedly 
more able than Gregory himself or any of the scholars of that day, 
must have left His Holiness in that pleasant frame of mind which 
premises a sympathetic consideration of the complimenter's case. 
Perhaps Gregory had not forgotten that Columbanus was a man of 
eminently good literary judgment when, on the Saint's going to 
visit him, in 599, he ordered the bells of Rome to ring for him, 
and he and his clergy did all the honours to the exiled Irishman. 

Columbanus' other quarrel was with the notorious Queen Brune- 
hilde, who then ruled that kingdom for her young grandson, Theod- 
oric, still in his minority. That wicked queen's love of ruling and 
of power, induced her to indulge and encourage the young king in 
all vicious pleasures, which should weaken and keep him subser- 
vient to her, and wean him from desire to take his rightful place. 
Now the young king, for all his weakness, loved and admired the 
Irish apostle, and would do anything to serve him. To the chagrin 



THE IRISH MISSIONARIES ABROAD 241 

of Brunehilde, Columbanus endeavoured to reform him — and in- 
deed succeeded several times in drawing him from his vicious 
courses, and setting him in the straight path. But the wily old 
queen-mother could always craftily undo whatever the saint did. 
Openly and unfearingly Columbanus, when he saw the absolute 
necessity for it, publicly thundered at the wicked king and at the 
still more wicked queen, his grand-mother. And her before whom 
some of the boldest trembled, this Irish wanderer threatened, re- 
buked, and denounced. And no royal threats in return could silence 
him. 

Once, when Theodoric had relapsed, Columbanus followed him 
to Epoisses, to reprimand him before his unworthy associates there. 
The Irishman stood without the castle gate, and demanded that 
the king should come to him. He indignantly rejected the invita- 
tion of Theodoric to enter and enjoy the castle's hospitality. And 
when then a rich feast was carried out to him Columbanus scat- 
tered the feast, and smashed the plates upon the gates of the castle. 

He finally succeeded in bringing the wicked pair, the old and 
the young, to repentance — or apparent repentance — and apology 
for their wicked conduct. 

But after a time they lapsed again and Columbanus now thrust 
them from the church — excommunicated both. Then they turned 
upon him. They forced him from under the roof of his monastery, 
and banished him to Besancon. The prison at Besangon was filled, 
and overflowed, with condemned criminals, most of them the vilest 
of the nation. To these Columbanus preached, and converted the 
most hardened, confessed them, bathed their feet, and freed them. 
And soon the city which he had entered as an outcast bowed to 
him as its master, and hailed him as its saviour. 

But his heart was torn for his poor fatherless community at 
Luxeuil. And at length, one morning, with Dogmael, one of his 
Irish disciples, he stole out of Besangon, and made his way again 
to Luxeuil. And, oh, the unbounded joy with which he was there 
greeted! by the long-time grieving monks, his afflicted children. 
And his joy to be once more with the community he loved — In the 
hallowed structure whose walls, cemented by sweat and blood, he 
had reared — outdid the joy of his fellows ! 

But not long was he left to his enjoyment, for when Brunehilde 
and Theodoric heard of his return they were enraged, and ordered 
him to be seized and sent back to his native country. Accordingly, 
he was taken away forcibly and carried to Nantes, where he was 
put aboard a ship that was sailing for Ireland. The hand of God, 
however, intervened. The ship, after reaching the ocean, was 



242 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

driven back upon the land, and he and his companions were dis- 
embarked by the sailors who considered that the mishap to the ship 
was caused by their carrying these holy ones away. He returned 
to Nantes, where he stayed for a short time, quickly becoming a 
hero to the people, who came to admire and to venerate him. Then 
he journeyed into Clothair's kingdom, but turned a deaf ear to 
Clothair's entreaty that he should settle down there under his pat- 
ronage. He passed on to the kingdom of Theodobert, where 
again he was joyfully received, and where Theodobert's nobles 
begged him to remain and to make their kingdom holy, learned, 
and famous. But he passed on, and went up the Rhine to Switzer- 
land, where, after journeying and sojourning and preaching for 
some time, and founding a monastery, he left behind him his dis- 
ciple Gall, and went into Italy. 

Arriving at Milan, the welcoming king, Agiluilph (whom he 
converted) of the Lombards, was proud and joyous to have this 
man honour his kingdom. He entreated Columbanus to settle in 
his dominion, and to choose where he would for his monastery. 

In Milan, Columbanus engaged in the Arian controversy that 
was then threatening to split the church. He preached against 
Arianism and wrote against it — hurled at it both oratorical and 
literary thunders. He now wrote a daring letter to Pope Boniface 
the Fourth, who was accused of harbouring Nestorians; and civilly 
but firmly upbraided His Holiness for the religious apathy he 
found among Italian Christians, contrasting it most unfavourably 
with the religious fervour that held his own people, the Irish. 
Furthermore, in this letter he says: "We Irish, though dwelling 
at the far ends of the earth, are all disciples of St. Peter and St. 
Paul . . . neither heretic nor Jew nor schismatic has ever been 
among us; but the Catholic faith just as it was first delivered to us 
by yourselves as successors to the apostles, is held by us unchanged." 

In that same year he settled down in Bobbio, and there erected 
his monastery, which became a centre of holiness and learning and 
a Gospel-fount which should bestow the knowledge of God on the 
heathen and the ignorant, and was to be far famed through long cen- 
turies to come. 

Clothair the Second, who in common with the other Gallic 
kings hungered to have the honour and the profit of this great 
saint settling under him, now sent a mission to Columbanus in- 
viting him back to Gaul, and offering gold to pay the expenses of 
his journey, and promising lavish gifts and endowments for his 
undertakings, should he return. Although Columbanus had to re- 
ject the offer, thanking Clothair and asking him to bestow all fa- 



THE IRISH MISSIONARIES ABROAD 243 

vours he had upon his loved monks at Luxeuil, It was a joy to liim 
to receive the ambassador, who was no other than Eustatlus, a 
friend and disciple, and now abbot of Luxeuil. It rejoiced him 
to get long-wlshed-for news of the monastery and the community he 
loved, of the monks and of the students and of the people. 

Here in Bobbio, In his very advanced years, Columbanus ended 
a fruitful and a notable life.* 

Even before his death, disciples and followers and students 
of Columbanus had gone forth to many parts, founding monas- 
teries of his rule. They spread rapidly and became very numer- 
ous; In northern France, eastern France, southwestern France, In 
Austrasia, along the Rhine, in Germany, in Switzerland, and In 
the northern part of Italy — so that for centuries after his death. 
In many lands and In many tongues, memorial prayers for this 
saint were, as a perpetual incense, ever mounting up to heaven.'' 

As abbots, as bishops, as evangelisers and saints, many of Co- 
lumbanus' Irish disciples and followers became famous on their 
own account. As St. Magnus (Magnoald) who founded two 
famous abbeys in Germany, that were richly endowed by King 
Pepin. And St. Delcol (Desle) who, patronised and endowed by 
King Clothair,^ founded a celebrated monastery at Lure, not far 
from Luxeuil, where his memory Is honoured on the fifteenth of 
February — "who was renowned," says the Galilean Martyrology 
of Laussoius, "for his many virtues, and the splendour of his 
miracles." At Lure Miss Margaret Stokes saw St. Desle's cup 
reverently preserved, and found his memory still ardently vener- 
ated. And above all, St. Gall, who with Columbanus' parting 

* Bobbio was suppressed by the French in 1803. There are still St. Columbanus' 
chapel, and his cave, and the holy well of Columbanus, to which the faithful resort 
for cures. 

It may be mentioned as a striking coincidence that, as in the case of so many 
of the Irish saints at home, Columbanus is said by the foreign legends to have been 
on the most intimate terms with all living things around him. Birds nestled in 
the palm of his hand : doves came to shelter in his cowl — and squirrels, too. When 
he sang his psalms, the wild birds joyously sang with him. And beasts of prey 
turned harmless in his presence. 

s Works of Columbanus still extant are the Monastic Rule, a Book of daily 
penances for monks, seventeen sermons, a book on the eight vices, Latin verses, 
and epistles, two to Boniface, two to Gregory, and one to the members of the 
Gallican Synod, and one to the monks of Luxeuil. 

Lannigan says of him: "He was a superior and very elegant genius, deeply 
versed not only in every branch of ecclesiastical learning, but likewise in classical 
studies, both Latin and Greek." 

8 While Deicol had only a little cell in a marsh, where afterwards he erected 
a great monastery, he was sitting at his door one day, when a wild boar hunted by 
King Clothair rushed up and took refuge with him, while he turned away the blood- 
thirsty hounds and saved the animal's Hfe. Qothair granted him the lands for his 
monastery, and endowed it by granting to him also the town of Bredana. 



244 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

words in his ear, "May the almighty God, for whose sake we left 
our native land, grant that we meet before his face in heaven" — 
settled on Lake Constance, and built his monastery there, around 
which sprang the city still known by the name of St. Gall. This 
saint did great things for the evangelising of that part of Switzer- 
land. He refused the bishopric of Constance, putting forward in 
his stead his deacon and disciple, John (most probably an Irish- 
man, also) who was elected. He also refused the Abbacy of 
Luxeuil, though a deputation of six Irish monks travelled to Con- 
stance to entreat him. In the year 635, at the age of ninety-five he 
died, renowned. King Sigebert the Second richly endowed his 
monastery, and the abbot of St. Gall was raised to the rank of a 
prince of the Empire. For many centuries after his death this 
abbey was noted as a centre of Irish activities. 

Though St. Gall did much for his part of Switzerland, of course 
the apostle of Switzerland was that other Irishman, St. FVidolin, 
who brought the faith there almost in the lifetime of St. Patrick — 
and who was buried in the Island of Seeking in the Rhine in 514 — 
Fridolinus the Wanderer, as he is called by Possevin and other 
Continental writers. They say he was a son of royalty in Ireland. 
He wandered much over both Germany and France at the time 
of Clovis, preaching wherever he went. He founded monasteries 
in Upper Saxony, in Alsace, Strasburg, and on the frontiers of 
Switzerland. Colgan in his Acta Sanctorum names eight of his 
foundations. Baltherus, a monk and canon of Seeking the most 
ancient author of St. Fridolin's life, expressly states that he was an 
Irishman. 

Peter Canisius in his Life of St. Fridolin says: "Old historians 
are agreed upon this, that Fridolin was of royal descent — that he 
was born in Lower Scotia, called Ireland." And Guillimanus, in 
his work on Swiss affairs, says: "Under Clovis, first Christian king 
of the Franks, FVidolinus, an Irishman by birth, and of royal line- 
age, spent a long time in Switzerland, and planted in it the name 
and faith of Christ, where he likewise performed many miracles." 
Possevin says he died in 595; some others say 574. It is recorded 
that Fridolin was a councillor at one time to King Clovis. He re- 
built the great basilica of St. Hilary, at Poitiers. His portrait 
is in the Blason of the Canton of Glarus, Switzerland. 

After Columbanus the most famous of Irish saints who laboured 
to spread the faith in France was Fursey, or Fursa, whom Bede 
styled "the Sublime" — who was a nephew of Brendan the Naviga- 
tor, and educated under liim.. He came to France about forty 
years later than Columbanus. He had laboured in the conversion 



THE IRISH MISSIONARIES ABROAD 245 

of Picts and Saxons after he left Ireland and before he came to 
France. He was a favourite of Sigebert, King of the East Saxons, 
whom he induced to resign the throne for a monk's cell, and under 
whose patronage he founded the abbey of Cnobersburg, now called 
Burghcastle in Suffolk. In France, Clovis the Second gave Fursa 
a place at Lagny on the Marne, where he founded his famous mon- 
astery, and drew to him many disciples from his beloved Galway. 
Erchinwald, Mayor of the Palace, Fursa's first Gallic patron, had 
tried in vain to hold him at Peronne; but Clovis' wife, Bathilde, 
it was who succeeded in making him accept Clovis' offer to settle at 
Lagny. Memory of Fursa's marvellous miracles still survive in 
that part of France — as also the miracles of his Irish disciples and 
followers who spread themselves over the country, bringing the 
people to Christ — especially Saints Algeis, Eto and Gobin (the 
latter endowed by Clothalr II), who are the respective patron 
saints of the towns of St. Algia, St. Avesnes and St. Gobin. To the 
holy well of St. Gobin still come the French pilgrims. Even of 
Fursa's servant, St. Maguille, the memory is honoured at St. 
Riquier, where is his holy well, and where, more than four centuries 
after, and again four centuries after that, his body was enshrined in 
a very precious shrine, and re-enshrined with ecclesiastical honours. 

Lamented through the breadth and length, of northern France, 
St. Fursa passed away in 648. And the city of Peronne which had 
contended for him in life, contended for him again in death — this 
time successfully. His body lay in state for thirty days, under a 
tent of precious tapestry, in their unfinished church. And the legend 
persists in Peronne that for generations afterward, rhe pious who 
flocked to the hallowed spot where his embalmed body had lain, 
were sensible of the sweet odour of spices, lingering there. His 
church in Peronne grew very rich, from the wealth bestowed on it 
by the crowds of pilgrims who for centuries thronged to the shrine 
of the famous Irishman. Fursa is the patron of Peronne and his 
figure is in the city banner. 

After returning from the first crusade, St, Louis of France went 
to Peronne in 1256, to be present at the translation of the body of 
Fursa, to a new shrine — a most beautiful one specially prepared 
for the body by St. Eloi, 

He was called Fursa of the Visions. He had wonderful visions 
of the other world — which were printed and reprinted in all lan- 
guages throughout the continent of Europe — and which are said 
by many to have been the original source from which Dante first 
got the Ideas for his Divine Comedy. Sir Francis Palgrave, for 
instance. In his History of Normandy and England says: "We 



246 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

have no difficulty in deducing the poetic genealogy of Dante's In- 
ferno from the Milesian Fursaeus." 

St. Foilan and St. Ultan (said to be brothers of Fursa) were 
brought from Ireland by St. Gertrude, the Abbess of Neville in Bra- 
bant. Both of them worked for Christ, in the Netherlands. The 
original cause of her bringing them — along with other Irish teachers 
— from Ireland, was to expound the Holy Scriptures, and instruct 
her nuns, as well as to preach the Word of God to the people. 
The Breviary of Paris thus refers to the fact: 

"Rome at that time took care to have the relics of the saints and 
holy books brought to her [Gertrude] ; she sent to Ireland for 
learned men to expound to herself and to her people the canticles of 
the holy law, which the Irish had almost by heart. The monastery 
of Vossuensis was built on the banks of the Sambre for receiving the 
saints Fullanus and Ultanus, brothers of St. Furseus." ^ 

In France also still another of the many Irish saints who 
preached and taught the heathen there, is honoured in the vehicle 
the jiacre — called after the Irishman, St. Fiacre, who was Bishop 
of Meaux and who flourished in the early seventh, century and 
had his cell in the forest of Meaux. He was of noble birth in 
Ireland, and went abroad with his train of disciples. His austere 
life and many miracles made him an object of much veneration. 
After his death an office of nine lessons in his honour was inserted 
in most of the breviaries in France, the first of which reads: 

"Ireland is dignified by the lustre of a new lamp: that island 
glitters, to the Meldi, by the presence of so great a light. The 
former sent Fiacrius; Meaux recei\ed the ray which was sent. The 
joy of both is in common; the latter possesses a father, the former 
a son." 

Such was the recourse of pilgrims to his grave for centuries 
after, that the special kind of conveyance in use in that part of 

' In November 1920, Cardinal Mercier and his Belgian Bishops, in the course 
of their reply to the cry of the Irish bishops against the terrible atrocities then be- 
ing wrought in Ireland by the English soldiery, say : 

"Does not Belgium herself owe the signal grace of belonging to Oirist largely 
to the first pioneers of Giristian civilisation from Ireland? The names of the 
Irish missionaries who in the Merovingian period evangelised the north of Gaul — 
Saints Columban, Foillan, Ultan, Livianus and many others — are familiar to us. 
More than 30 Belgian churches have been dedicated to saints who were natives of 
Ireland. 

"Ireland, won to the faith in the fifth century, seems to have received from 
Divine Providence a special mission for the Apostolate. 

"What, then, is your history but a long Calvary of a people incessantly be- 
trayed, despoiled, starved, but ever unfailing in its faith and its passion for liberty?" 



THE IRISH MISSIONARIES ABROAD 247 

the country, which used to carry the pilgrims to the grave, came 
to be called fiacre — and retains that name to-day. 

St. GIbrien, after whom is named the village of Gibrien near 
Chalons-sur-Mer, was, "one of seven brothers and three sisters 
from Ireland on pilgrimage for the love of Christ." They dwelt 
on the Marne, and there lived a life of labour united with won- 
derful holiness, and constant prayer, which won for them great 
love among the natives of the country. And another ancient French 
writer says that "they instructed the people and formed in them 
the habits of faith, piety and morality." St. Gibrien's relics were 
enshrined in the church of St. Remi in Rheims. 

June third is the festival of two other Irish saints, Caidoc 
and Fricor, who, with twelve companions, landing at the mouth 
of the Somme in the latter part of the sixth century, there preached 
and taught. They converted the heathen noble who was to become 
St. Riquier. They afterwards spread the Gospel in Picardy. Their 
relics were enshrined with those of Maguille by St. Jervinus in 
1070. 

The Irishman, St. Rumald — whose church in Mallnes (of which 
city he is patron) is now the metropolitan church of the Low 
Countries, and holds his relics in a beautiful silver shrine — came 
from Leinster. He was bishop of Malines in Brabant, where 
Count Ado induced him to settle. Another Leinsterman, Livinus, 
who was a Latin poet, was martyred in Flanders in 663, after he 
had preached the Gospel there, and converted many. His relics 
are preserved in the church of St. Babo in Ghent. 

John D'Alton refers to the fact that Vernutaeus in his work 
on the spread of the Christian faith in Belgium, by the Irish saints, 
tells how, even at the time that the Danes were ravaging their 
own country, they were successfully spreading Christianity from 
Mechlin, Brabant, Flanders, Artois, Namur, Leyden, Gilderland, 
Holland, Friesland and Luxemburg. 

Authberte, bishop of Cambrai, an Irish missionary who con- 
verted Hannonia, is styled the apostle of Flanders. The old 
church of St. Dympna, a king's daughter from Monaghan (in the 
seventh century), is still to be seen at Gheel. She is honoured as 
the patron of the insane. Fedegond converted the people of Ant- 
werp, where his name is still revered. St. Briccus, from whom is 
named the town of Brieux in Brittany, is said to have been a na- 
tive of Cork. 

These arc but a few of the hundreds of Irish saints, to whom, 
in those early ages, France and civilisation owe a debt which they 
can never repay. 



248 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Italy owes to Ireland a St. Bridget and her brother St. An- 
drew, St. Donatus, St. Cummian and St. Cathaldus — and many 
unrecorded missionaries. 

Philip, a Florentine, who was an ambassador of Pope Boniface 
in 1390, wrote the life of Andrew who is patron of San Martino 
a Mensola — "a holy man from the Island of Ireland," says Philip, 
"more generally called Scotia" — and of Bridget, patroness of San 
Martino a Lobaca. The tomb of the eighth century St. Cummian 
who, a bishop in Ireland, became a humble monk at Bobbio, is 
still to be seen at the latter place. St. Ursus founded a church in 
the Val d'Osta, in the first half of the sixth century. Pellegrinus, 
from Ireland, in the time of Columbanus settled down in the Ap- 
ennines at Garfagnana. The tomb of the Irish St. Siloa is to 
be seen at Lucca, where he died in the sixth century. 

St. Donatus settled in Tuscany in the beginning of the ninth 
century. He became bishop of Fiesole. He was a poet and author 
of several works. Colgan quotes a few lines from a Latin poem 
of his in which he describes his native Ireland. Donatus was 
much celebrated for his virtues as well as for his intellectual 
ability. 

Donatus is said to have been a brother of the most famous 
Italian Irish saint Cathaldus (Cathal) — after whom is named the 
city of San Cataldo in southern Italy. Cathaldus is the patron 
saint of Tarentum, and his festival is celebrated there with much 
pomp, on March eighth. He became bishop of Tarentum and 
rescued all that country from the paganism into which it had re- 
lapsed after the Gospel had been given to it by the Apostles Peter 
and Mark. 

In this connection, Usher quotes from Joannes Juvenis: 

"The Tarentines returning to the worship of idols, as a dog to 
his vomit, the holy Cathaldus born in Ireland brought them back to 
the ancient faith." 

That was in all probability in the sixth century, though his 
Italian biographers, the brothers Moron, claim that he came there 
some centuries before that. Bonaventura Moron's poem on St. 
Cathaldus' life begins: 

"The icy lerne bewails that so great an ornament of the West, 
second to none in piety, celebrated in the ancient laws of Phalantus, 
should be sent to foreign nations." 

And from the office sung in honour of Cathaldus at the Church 
of Tarentum is the following, quoted by Usher : 



THE IRISH MISSIONARIES ABROAD 249 

"Rejoice, O happy Ireland, for being the country of so fair an 
Oilspring! But thou, Tarentum, rejoice still more, which enclosest 
(within a tomb) so great a treasure!" 

This office says that when Cathaldus taught in Ireland (prob- 
ably at Lismore), Gauls, Angles, Scots and pupils from other coun- 
tries studied under him. 

In 1 150 Archbishop Giraldus had Cathaldus' relics shrined in 
a silver shrine decorated with gold and jewels. The ancient mar- 
ble tomb which had held the body is by the high altar in the 
church. There also is a large silver statue of the saint. 

With the possible exception of France, there is no country on 
the Continent, that owes so much to the Irish missionaries as Ger- 
many. For at least six hundred years, from the sixth to the twelfth 
century, the holy men from Ireland were to be met with in almost 
every part of the Germanic countries; and their establishments 
became the centres of enlightenment for the vast populations which 
they so materially helped to lead out of the night of barbarism. 

"Near the end of the seventh century and the beginning of the 
eighth," says Zimmer, "a long series of these (Irish) missionary 
establishments extended from the mouths of the Meuse and Rhine 
to the Rhone and the Alps, and many others founded by the Ger- 
mans are the offsprings of Irish monks. And throughout the chron- 
icles and Lives of the Saints the purely Irish are constantly found." 

But, for long centuries after, their activities in Germany de- 
creased not. 

The following words are from a tribute paid to Ireland and 
her missionaries in an address which the heads of German col- 
leges presented to Daniel O'Connell in 1844: 

"We never can forget to look upon your beloved country as our 
mother in religion, that already, at the remotest periods of the Chris- 
tian era, commiserated our people, and readily sent forth her spirit- 
ual sons to rescue our pagan ancestors from idolatry and to entail 
upon them the blessings of the Christian faith." 

Dr. Ferdinand Keller of Zurich, in his Illum.inations and Fac- 
similes from Irish manuscripts in the Libraries of Switzerland, 
says: "The eleventh and twelfth centuries were the greatest for 
the Irish monks on the Continent. Communities of Scotic monks 
were formed in almost every large city in southern Germany." 
And it was only the results of the Norman invasion of Ireland 
which even then put practical end to their Continental activities. 



250 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

And of the latter part of the period indicated we may quote 
the testimony of Dr. Wattenbach in his Congregations of the 
Monasteries of the Scotic: 

"The most prosperous time of Irish rribnks was in the twelfth 
century. They were examples of rigid abstemiousness, and filled 
with ardent faith that incited them to go afar. Even in Bulgaria 
the Emperor Barbarossa, going on crusade, fell in with an Irish abbot 
at the castle of Scribentium. His monastery probably served as a 
hospice for pilgrims to Jerusalem." 

A few of the Irish saints In the Germanic countries are here 
set down. 

St. Gunlfort, descended of noble parents in Ireland, preached 
in Germany at a very early time — some think before St. Patrick's 
era. His festival I« kept at Pavia In Italy on the 22nd of August. 
The fesrival of his sister, St. Dardaluch, who went to Germany 
with him, is observed at Pressing in Bavaria. Usher records these 
two Irish saints. 

St. Arbogast, who converted large numbers in Alsace, became 
bishop of Strasburg In 646 — appointed thereto by King Dago- 
bert. By his dying request Arbogast was Interred in the place of 
public execution called Mont Michel, where a monastery dedicated 
to his name was founded long afterward. 

The honoured apostle of Franconia is St. Klllan. He had 
gone on a pilgrimage to Rome, and so favourably did he impress 
Pope Conan for his wisdom and sacred learning, that he sent him 
to evangelise Franconia. There he converted Duke Gosbert and 
many of his subjects. But because, following the bold example of 
most of these remarkable Irish missionaries, whose fearlessness 
in attacking both ecclesiastics and kings Is noted by Dr. Wattenbach 
he persisted In commanding Gosbert to put away an unlawful 
wife, that woman, incensed, had him martyred on 8th of July, 
689. Kllian's bible is still preserved, and on his feast-day It is 
exposed on the high-altar In the Cathedral church of Wurtzburg. 

St. Tuban, an Irish bishop, founded a monastery on an Island 
In the Rhine at Honau In 720, which was patronised by King Pepin 
and Charlemagne. There is still extant the confirmation grant 
"ad pauperis et peregreno gentis Scotorum" attested by the signa- 
tures of the abbot, the bishop and one presbyter of this monastery 
— all of them Irish names. 

Dlsenberg, formerly Mont DIsibod, In the Lower Palatinate 
takes its name from Disibod "an Irish noble of profound erudi- 



THE IRISH MISSIONARIES ABROAD 251 

tion," who preached the Gospel for seven years, in different parts 
of Germany, and founded a monastery on Mont Disibod. 

In 742 Albuin (better known to the Germans as Wittan) went 
to Thuringia, where he converted great numbers, and was made 
bishop of Tritzlar by the Pope — and by Arnold Wion is styled 
apostle of the Thuringlans. 

St. Virgilius (Fergal) who did good missionary work in Ger- 
many, and was famous for his scholarship, was made bishop of 
Salsburg, in the late seventh or early eighth century. More will 
be said of him in a succeeding chapter. 

St. Willibrord who was apostle of the Batavians and the Fries- 
landers, although of Saxon descent, was educated in Ireland. Al- 
cuin, who wrote his hfe, says: "Because he heard that scholastic 
erudition flourished in Ireland, and was roused by his intercourse 
with holy men who had been taught there, he studied during 
twelve years among Ireland's most pious and religious masters 
that he might become a preacher to many people." 

St. Finan "of the Celestial Visions" founded the monastery 
of Richenau, at the end of the eighth or beginning of the ninth 
century. He was son of a Leinster prince and had been captive 
of the Danes in Ireland before leaving it to go to Rome — and 
thence went into Germany, where he preached for many years. 

St. Colman, who is the patron saint of Lx)wer Austria and 
whose festival is on October thirteenth, was martyred between 
two robbers, in the year 1012. The Martyrology of Donegal 
says that he was the son of Malachi Mor, Ard-Righ of Ireland. 
This is uncorroborated by any other testimony. 

The martyr, John, who came to Germany in 1057 accompany- 
ing Marianus Scotus, worked among the Slavonians at the re- 
quest of Prince Gothescale — and was martyred by them. Five 
years after reaching Germany from Ireland he became bishop of 
Mecklenburg. 

Marianus Scotus, the author of The Chronicles of the World, 
lived a life of wonderful holiness — first at Fulda and later at 
Mayence, and won great fame and esteem among the German 
people. He produced several works, but his Chronicle of the 
World is that by which he is immortalised. 

In a book entitled Bavaria Sancta there is listed, .by the Bava- 
rian author, a bishop, the names of Irish saints who contributed 
to the evangelisation of that one country. He gives them as: 
Agilus, Marlnus, Anianas, Magnus, Columbanus, Erhardus, Alto, 
Virgilius, Marinus the Younger, Thedanus, Fridolinus, Kilian, 



252 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Colman, Salust, Amor, Arno (who was brother to Alculn, the 
great scholar), Murcherel (or, as some call him, Muricheroda- 
chus), Vimuis, ZImius and Martinus. 

In many respects one of the most remarkable of Irish workers 
for the faith in Germany was the Holy Marianu-s Scotus of Done- 
gal — whose correct name was Muiredach MacRorty, a native of 
Tyrhugh in Donegal — who arrived in Germany only eleven years 
after Marianus the Chronicler, and who in 1076 founded a mon- 
astery which was to become famous, at Ratisbon — from which 
his Irish followers (who for ages after continued thronging there 
from Ireland) branched out and built many other notable monas- 
teries in Germany and Austria — all of them under the jurisdiction 
of the Irish Monastery at Ratisbon. Some of these Irish sister 
monasteries were the monastery of Wurtzburg, Nuremberg, Con- 
stance, St. George in Vienna, Si. Mary in Vienna and Eichstadt. 

The Bavarian annalist, Aventinus, talking of Marianus and 
his companions and successors, says: 

"By their devotion to the strictest religious exercises, and self- 
denial, by their writing and teaching, they earned unbounded respect, 
and became well approved patterns of piety. They were favourites 
of everybod}*. And with one mouth the whole people spoke loudly 
in their praise; kings and nobles built monasteries for them, and in- 
vited them east and west." 

Strange to say, the Irish monastery at Ratisbon came to have 
jurisdiction over not only the many other Irish mona^steries of 
Germany, but also over many priories in Ireland, as is proved by 
two briefs on the subject by Innocent the Second. No less than 
twelve Irish monasteries in Germany were formally placed under 
the authority of the St. James' Monastery of Ratisbon by the Lat- 
eran Council of 12 15. 

The monastery of St. Mary of Vienna was founded by Henry, 
Duke of Austria in 1161. In the charter of this monastery he 
makes only Scots (Irish) eligible for admission "because of their 
long and acknowledged piety." 

"Well trained in all human and divine knowledge was Ma- 
rianus, when he came from Ireland," says the monk of St. James 
who was his biographer. "He was a poet as well as a theologian." 
One of his prized works is his Commentaries on the Psalms; his 
most valued one is his Commentary on St. Paul's Epistles. This, 
written in the form of marginal and interlineary notes is still pre- 
served in the Imperial Library of Vienna. In it his wide reading 
is shown by the fact that he quotes Jerome, Augustine, Gregory, 



THE IRISH MISSIONARIES ABROAD 253 

Origen, Alcuin, Cassian, and many such. Before he established 
his own monastery at Ratisbon, and while he still occupied a cell 
there, under the patronage of Abbess Emma, he employed himself 
constantly, without cease, writing and giving away books; these 
being chiefly copies of the Scriptures, and of various religious 
works. His biographer pictures him at this work all day long, 
while the two companions who had journeyed with him from Ire- 
land, John and Candidus, prepared for him as fast as they could, 
parchment, and pens, and ink. And as fast as he turned off his 
books he gave them out gratis to the abbess, to her nuns, to monks, 
to poor widows, to everybody! This Irishman wanderer who, 
for sake of religion and learning, had exiled himself to far, strange 
lands, a man of brilliant parts, of vast reading, and deep learning, 
toiled, thus, day and night with his pen, to bestow the products of 
it upon the hundreds of these people who so hungered for what 
he had to give ! What wonder that when this man decided finally 
to settle down in Ratisbon, "his determination was hailed with 
joy, by the whole population." And the abbess gave him the 
church of St. Peter, with an adjacent plot. 

"This holy man wrote from beginning to end, with his own hand, 
the Old and New Testament, with explanatory comments on the 
same; and that not once or twice, but over and over again, with a 
view to the eternal reward — all the while clad in sorry garb, living 
on slender diet, attended and aided by his brethren both in the upper 
and lower monasteries, who prepared the parchments for his use; be- 
sides, he also wrote many smaller books and manuals, psalters for 
distressed widows and poor clerics of the same city, towards the 
health of his soul without any prospect of earthly gain. Further- 
m.ore, through the grace of God, many congregations of the monastic 
order, which in faith and charity and imitation of the blessed 
Marianus, are derived from the aforesaid Ireland, and inhabit Ba- 
varia and Franconia, are sustained by the writings of the blessed 
Marianus." 

He died on the ninth of February, 1088. Marianus' Imme- 
diate successors in the abbacy built, and afterwards enlarged and 
beautified, the new monastery of St. James (first founded in 1090, 
two years after Marianus' death). It was done almost entirely 
with money obtained from Irish royalties, especially from Conor 
O'Brien, King of Munster, and again from King Murtach O'Brien. 
The old chronicle of Ratisbon says: 

"Now be it known, that neither before nor since was there a 
more noble monastery, such magnificent towers, walls, pillars, and 



254 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

roofs, so rapidly erected, so perfectly finished, as in this monastery, 
because of the wealth and money sent by the kings and princes of 
Ireland." 

Yet the monks sought and got aid for their monastery from 
many quarters. One of these Irishmen penetrated even to Kiev, 
and from thence brought back a load of furs, contributed by the 
King of Russia. 

And some of these Irish monks were signally honoured by 
royalty. Gregory and Carus, from St. Peter's, became chaplains 
for the Emperor Conrad, and the Empress Gertrude, who be- 
stowed on them the church of St. Aegedius at Nuremberg. And 
Declan, who succeeded them there, was made chaplain to the 
Emperor Frederick. 

The abbot of the Irish monastery of St. James was granted, 
by King Henry in 1225 the right of bearing in his coat of arms 
one-half of the eagle — which meant that he was elevated to the 
rank of one of the princes of the realm. 

Dr. Wattenbach in his Congregation of the Monasteries of 
the Scots, describes for us how the bands of Irish missionaries 
travelled wide over Europe, seeking the fresh fields to which God 
urged them. *'In this way we find them always wandering in large 
and small companies. Their outward appearance was most strik- 
ing, the more so as they were still in the habit of painting their 
eyelids. Their whole outfit consisted of a pilgrim's staff, a 
leathern water-bottle, a wallet, and a case of some relics. In this 
guise they appeared before the people, addressing themselves to 
them every^where with the whole power of their native eloquence — 
some (as Gallus) in the language of the country — the rest employ- 
ing an interpreter before the people, but to ecclesiastics speaking 
in the common language of the Latin Church. 

It was probably because of their Continental reputation for 
fearlessness and fight that the Abbot Sampson of St. Edmund's, 
in journeying to Pope Alexander in 1161 — when Italy was ex- 
cited by schism — being attacked and mobbed by a populace who 
were against Alexander, acted in the way he picturesquely de- 
scribes: "I pretended to be a Scot, and having adopted the Scot- 
tish dress and behaviour, I shook my staff at those who scoffed 
at me, crying aloud at them, after the manner of the Scots." In 
this account it is also interesting to note that he says, "I carried 
my old shoes on my shoulders after the manner of the Scots" — a 
custom which still exists among the mountains of Ireland. The 



THE IRISH MISSIONARIES ABROAD 255 

Abbot's account of his strange experience is quoted by Watten- 
bach, from Cronica Johannes de Brakelonda. 

Of all the hundreds of holy men who in those centuries exiled 
themselves from Ireland for the purpose of carrying Christ to 
the still darkened nations and peoples of Europe, we, joining with 
the Irish monk of Ratisbon who wrote the life of Marianus, may 
well say: 

"And now my brothers if you ask me what will be the reward 
of Marianus and the pilgrims like him who left the sweet soil of 
their native land, free from obnoxious beast and worm, with its 
mountains and hills, its valleys and groves, so well suited for the 
chase, the picturesque expanses of its rivers, its green fields and its 
streams swelling up from purest fountains, and like children of 
Abraham the Patriarch came without hesitation unto the land God 
pointed out to them, this is my answer: They will dwell in the 
house of the Lord with the Angels and Archangels forever: they 
will behold in Sion the God of Gods, to whom be honour and glory 
for endless ages." 

Concannon, Helen: Columbanus. 

Keller, Dr. Ferdinand: Essay on "Illuminations and Facsimiles from An- 
cient Irish MSS. in the Libraries of Switzerland." Translated from 
German with Introductory Remarks by the Rev. Wm. Reeves, D.D., 
in Ulster Journ. of Archaeol. VIII. 

Wattenbach: "Die Kongregation der Schottenkloster in Deutschland." 
Translated by Dr. Reeves, with notes, in the Ulster Journal of Arch- 
seology, vol. VII. 

Stokes, Miss Margaret: Three Months in the Forests of France: A Pil- 
grimage in Search of Vestiges of Irish Saints in France. 

Six Months in the Apennines: A Pilgrimage in Search of Vestiges 

of Irish Saints in Italy. 

Lightfoot, Dr. J. B., Bishop of Durham: Leaders in the Northern Church. 



CHAPTER XXIX 

IRISH SCHOLARS ABROAD 

Learning, like religion, had its hosts of Irish missionaries, who 
spread themselves afar, eager to lead to the light benighted peo- 
ples over the Continent, as well as in the neighbouring isles. When 
the Saxon, Aldhelm, who, it will be remembered, was a pupil of 
the Irishman Maeldubh, founder of the school of Malmesbury, 
wrote to his fellow-countryman, Eadfride ("who had given six 
years to philosophy in Ireland, and enriched his mind with the 
treasures of the Scotic hive") — "Ireland is a fertile and blooming 
nursery of letters : one might as soon reckon the stars of heaven, 
as enumerate her students and literature" — many of these Irish 
literary men were then eagerly pursuing their task of love among 
Aldhelm's fellow countrymen in all corners of Britain. But many 
others, too, were working in Continental fields, dispelling the dark- 
ness of distant lands with the bright torch which they bore from 
the beacon-fires of learning that glowed on every hill in Eirinn. 

"These Irish torch-bearers founded," says John D'Alton in 
his R. I. A. Essay on Irish History, "the most flourishing schools 
of Christian Europe. And to them the world is indebted for the 
introduction of scholastic divinity and the application of philo- 
sophical reasoning to illustrate the doctrines of theology." 

And Zimmer testifies: "They laid the corner-stone of west- 
ern culture on the Continent, the rich result of which Germany 
shares and enjoys to-day, in common with all other civilised na- 
tions." 

O'Halloran, illustrating their feeling of superiority over the 
Continentals, quotes from the life of the Irish Kilian, apostle of 
Franconia, how when his fellow countryman, St. Fiacre, encoun- 
tered him in Gaul, he asked Kilian: "Quid te charisslme frater, 
ad has barbaras, gentes deduxit?" ("What has brought you, 
dearest brother, to these barbarous people?") And Columbanus 
in one of his epistles tells the Continental scholars that the Irish 
schoolmen regarded some of their boasted Continental phllosphers 
with indulgent tolerance. 

256 



IRISH SCHOLARS ABROAD 257 

Of Irish scholars on the Continent we have ah-eady referred 
to the brilliant genius, Celestius, who is claimed for Ireland. But 
the claims of another very early and very brilliant genius, Coelius 
Sedulius, who, as was mentioned, flourished in the time of Theodo- 
sius, and dedicated a book to him, are better substantiated. Arch- 
bishop Usher quotes from Trithemius : 

"Sedulius, a presbyter, a native of Scotid (Ireland), was a dis- 
ciple from his earliest youth of Heidelbertus, Archbishop of the Scots. 
He was conversant in divine learning, and very skilled in profane 
literature. He excelled in poetry and prose, and leaving Scotia, for 
the sake of informing himself, came to France. After this he trav- 
ersed Italy, Asia, Achaia, from thenA he proceeded to Rome, where 
he became illustrious for his eruditicp." 

Corroborative proof of Sedulius b^ng an Irishman Is adduced 
from the fact that the celebrated eigh^ century Irish geographer, 
Dicull, refers to him as "noster Sedulitis." 

And a very ancient copy of SeduKus' Pauline commentaries, 
published by John Sichard, which was^;preserved In the abbey of 
Fulda, shows on the title page, "SedulILScoti Hiberniensis." This 
occurs also in another edition of his w^ks published at Basle. 

Sedulius' works were many and |J^ried. Usher enumerates 
them thus — fourteen books on the epi^es of Paul, two books on 
the miracles of Christ, a book on Prisj^anus, a book on Donatus, 
a book of epistles to various people, ;^four volumes dedicated to 
the abbot of Macedonia, a volume dedi^fited to the Emperor Theo- 
dosius, many hymns, and his famous po^^n. Carmen Paschale. Se- 
dulius composed some of the most beai^t^ful hymAs In the Catholic 
service, such as A Solis Otis CardindJ-* In the twelfth century, 
seven hundred years after his death, g^founcll of seventy bishops 
in Rome recommended to the falthfulv, his paschal poem, which 
had won him the title of the Christian ^Irgll. 

Another very remarkable Irishman,-. who. In distant time, and 
distant field, had the Identity of his nationality almost lost, was 
Augustine, a monk In Carthage — alrejady referred to — who, in 
the seventh century, was the author of. vthe remarkable work The 
Difficulties of Scripture. This Is a book, in which, with extraordi- 
nary ingenuity he tried to reconcile science and Scripture, upon 
such knotty points as the falling of the jtvalls of Jericho, the stand- 
ing of the sun at Joshua's command, --^he speaking of Balaam's 
ass, the turning of Lot's wife Into a pillar of salt and so forth. 
He essays in each case with astonishing cleverness to demonstrate 
that the apparent miracles were, in reality, developments of some 



258 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

pre-existing natural law. Stokes says that the work discloses a 
scholar deeply versed in books, and widely experienced in travel. 

And Reeves, in an article on Augustine (in Proc. R. I. A. 1862) 
says of this work that it is a most creditable monument of learning 
and religious feeling, at a period when the Irish church was notable 
for its learning. 

Augustine mentions the death in Ireland of an Irishman of 
some note, Manicheas the Wise, in 652. And in this he is borne 
out by the evidence of the Annals of Tighernach and the Annals 
of Ulster, which record at that time the death of St. Manchan of 
Lemanchan. In the book he enumerates the animals of Ireland, 
as wolves, deer, wild boars, foxes, badgers, bears, rabbits, and 
offers sound geological reason for their existence on this island, 
which he shows had been an integral part of Europe, in a remote 
age, but was cut off from it by a cataclysm. 

The period of most marked activity of Irish scholars on the 
Continent of Europe was probably during the Carlovingian dynasty 
— when, it has been said, almost every school in Europe was taught 
by an Irishman — and furthermore that every scholar who knew 
Greek was either an Irishman or the pupil of an Irishman. In 
the preceding period, that is during the Merovingian time, Co- 
lumbanus, with whom we have dealt, was the most noted example 
of Irish scholarship in Europe. The great Charlemagne and 
his successors, ardent patrons of learning, drew to them the choic- 
est flowers of Irish scholarship, and then bestowed their fragrance 
as a blessing upon many lands. 

Usher says: "From Ireland Charles transferred the wisdom 
of Greece and of Latium. And from her he obtained the doctors 
and instructors of the uninstructed youth." 

"In schools and monasteries all over France," says Zimmer, 
"the Carlovingian king employed Irish monks as teachers of writ- 
ing, grammar, logic, rhetoric, astronomy, and arithmetic." And 
in another place the same authority refers to "the long list of Irish 
scholars who laboured under Charlemagne, his son, and grand- 
son, on French and German soil. A knowledge of Christianity 
and secular science emanated at that time from Ireland alone of 
the whole western world, and established itself at many different 
points: Clement, Dicuil, Johannes, and Scotus Erigina, at the 
court school, Dungall at Pavia, Scdulius Scotus at Liege, Virgil 
at Salsburg, and Mocngal at St. Gall." And he quotes from 
Hieric, in his Biography of St. Germanus, where in his dedication 
of the book to the Emperor Charles the Bald this ancient writer 
(who was himself probably a product of Irish teaching) says: 



IRISH SCHOLARS ABROAD 259 

"Need I remind Ireland that she sent troops of philosophers over 
land and sea, to our distant shores, and that her most learned sons 
offered their gifts of wisdom of their own free will in the service 
of our learned king, our Solomon." 

A quarter of a century earlier, in 849, we have in the writings 
of Walahfred Strabo a striking illustration of the fact that these 
Irish wanderers over the Continent, were everywhere looked up 
to as the exponents of higher learning. Talking of Errebald, a 
German abbot of noble birth, who recently died, Strabo says, 
"After being instructed in theology at Reichenau (St. Finian's 
monastery) he was afterwards sent in the company of some learned 
men, to an Irish instructor to enjoy the privilege of his training 
in secular branches of science and the arts." And this bears out 
the fact, mentioned by O'Halloran and many others, that it became 
a sort of proverb on the Continent to say of any ambitious one 
who was for a time missed from his regular haunts, Amandatus 
est ad discipltnam in Hibernia. 

About the year 800 Cambrai was a celebrated rallying ground 
of the Irish. "Not only Cambrai but also Rheims, Poissons, Laon, 
and Liege, had at one and the same period colonies of Irishmen," 
says M. Gougand (Les chretiennes Celtiques). "If we consult 
the evidence given by their contemporaries concerning the learned 
men that had come amongst them out of Ireland, we must acknowl- 
edge that they all show they are conscious of being greatly in their 
debt for the progress realised in their studies. Irish knowledge 
is in their eyes something apart from all else, and worthy of their 
most pompous encomiums." 

At this same time, Zimmer tells us, Ratgar, abbot of Fulda, 
was sending scholarly monks to the Irish Clement, to complete 
their higher secular education. This Clement is, in the official 
roster of Charlemagne's household, set down as "Instructor to the 
Imperial Court." 

The first coming of Clement and of another noted Irish scholar 
of the time, Albinus, and their strange introduction to the Conti- 
nental world, and to Charlemagne, are thus set down by Notker 
le Begue himself: 

"When Charles began to reign alone In the West, and that learn- 
ing had almost everywhere become extinct, it happened that two 
Scots from Ireland arrived on the shores of Gaul, with some Brit- 
ish merchants; these two men were incomparably skilled in sacred 
and profane learning. While they displayed nothing for sale, they 
cried out to those who came to purchase, 'If any one be desirous of 
wisdom, let him come to receive it.' They were invited to the 



26o THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

presence of Charles, who questioned them, and was overjoyed after 
they were examined : he kept them for some time with him. Charles, 
soon after this, being obliged to go to war, ordered the one named 
Clement to reside in Gaul. He recommended to them some very 
noble youths, some of the middle classes, and several of the lowest 
ranks; it was also ordered by the king, that everything necessary for 
their support should be supplied to them, and convenient houses for 
their accommodation were provided. The other, named Albinus, was 
sent to Italy, where the monastery of St. Augustin, near the city of 
Ticinus, was given him, that all who wished to be instructed might 
come to learn." 

The brilliancy of Clement and the work, accomplished by him, 
caused a fourteenth century viriter, Luopoldus Bebenburgius, to 
say, "The French may be compared to the Romans and the Athe- 
nians on account of the works of Clement, an Irishman." 

There are several authorities cited by Colgan, including Luo- 
poldus and Vincent Daubais, who hold that Clement, not Alcuin, 
founded the royal school of Paris. 

Clement died at Wurtzburg in 826 on a pilgrimage to the tomb 
of his fellow-countryman, Kilian. His old companion Albinus 
died in Pavia — where Charlemagne had sent him to conduct the 
important school there. 

Shortly after the death of Albinus, another illustrious Irish- 
man was appointed to succeed him, by Lothaire, the grandson of 
Charlemagne. This was the astronomer Dungall who is believed 
to have studied at Bangor. According to Mosheim he was teach- 
ing philosophy and astronomy in a French monastery when, in 
811, he first came into prominence by preparing for Charlemagne 
a scientific explanation of two eclipses of the sun, which had oc- 
curred the previous year, and which had terrified Charlemagne's 
subjects. This document, still in existence, betrays the hand and 
the mind of a master. Zimmer tells us that in Pavia pupils came 
to Dungall from Milan, Brescia, Lodi, Bergamo, Versalli, Genoa, 
and Como. While there Dungall won for himself lasting fame 
by a noted controversy on Iconoclasm in which he engaged, and, 
it is said, defeated, the Spanish Claudius. It was a controversy 
that drew world-wide attention. And Zimmer says it was remark- 
able also as being the meeting on foreign soil of two learned rep- 
resentatives of the only two countries which had maintained and 
fostered Greco-Roman culture during the barbaric cataclysm. 
Dungall was not only distinguished as astronomer and theologian, 
but also as a deep classical scholar. To end his days Dungall re- 
tired to the Irish foundation of Bobbio, among the Apennines, to 



IRISH SCHOLARS ABROAD 261 

the Library of which monastery he presented forty of his books. 
The handwriting of that distinguished man is still to be seen upon 
some of these volumes — now preserved in the Ambrosian Library 
at Milan.^ 

Another of the many distinguished Irish whom Charlemagne 
had gathered around him was Dicuil — a grammarian, geometri- 
cian, astronomer, and geographer. In the year 816 he published 
a treatise on astronomy, and in 825 his most famous work, De 
Mensura Provinciarum Orbis Terrae.^ 

This remarkable work, which was evidently a standard Con- 
tinental geographical Avork in those days, was discovered by M. 
Letronne, the Egyptologist, in the French National Library, in 
1812, and was then published in Paris. It proved Dicuil to be 
the earliest geographer giving account of the Faroe Islands, and 
Iceland — of which latter it mentioned that during a great portion 
of the year its sun never set. 

Letronne was delighted to find in this ancient work "a descrip- 
tion of the pyramids, and measurements of them which exactly 
tallied with his own." Dicuil told, moreover, of a canal connect- 
ing the Nile with the Red Sea — which was at first believed to be 
a grievous slip on the part of the geographer — until the discovery 
of the fact that a canal long since filled up, and lost to memory, 
had actually been constructed from the Nile to the Red Sea, by 
Hadrian, 

In his work Dicuil quotes Pomponius Mela, Orosius, Isadore 
of Seville, and Priscian the grammarian. And Professor Stokes, 
comparing the Irishman's geography with that of John Malalas 
of Antioch, says : "Antioch about A. D. 600 was a centre of 
Greek culture and erudition, and the chronicle of Malalas a mine 
of informxation on many questions, but compared with the Irish 
work of Dicuil, its mistakes are laughable." 

This geography of Dicull's incidentally affords one of the many 
evidences of the far wanderings of the Irish in those days, Inas- 
much as he states that he got his Information about Iceland on the 
one hand, and the Hadrian canal on the other, from Irish monks 
who witnessed what they told him. His Egyptian Information he 
got from a Brother FIdelis, who Dicuil says "told In my presence 
to my master Slubhne (Sweeney) that he, FIdelis, was one of an 

1 Many manuscripts of the Irish monks of Bobhio are now scattered among 
the libraries of Italy. The Ambrosian library in Milan, the University library of 
Turin, and the Real Bibliotica Borbonica in Naples, are all enriched by some of 
these treasures. 

-For much information ahnut Dinii! ere Reeve's paper in the Ulster Journal 
^f Archaeology, volume seven. 



262 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Irish company who sailed up the Nile and through the canal into 
the Red Sea" — after they had completed a Jerusalem pilgrimage. 

Under Charles the Bald, Seduhus Scotus another famous Irish- 
man — who is not to be confounded with the older (Coelius) Sedu- 
lius — taught the school at Liege. He was a Scripturian, theolo- 
gian, grammarian, poet, political writer, and classical scholar. He 
seems to have been deeply versed in Greek, and even Hebrew. 
The French Thurot, writing about the works of Sedulius which 
are still extant (in manuscript, in French libraries) says, "he 
makes a parade of his Greek knowledge." In 1825 a work of his 
upon the Gospels showing his Greek and Hebrew scholarship, 
was published by Cardinal Mai — from the manuscript in the Vati- 
can Library. There is a Greek psalter of his in one of the li- 
braries at Paris — and also a compilation on the Gospel of St. 
Matthew. One of his poems indicates that there were at Liege 
at the same time as himself, other Irishmen who were learned 
grammarians — one of whom, Cruinmel, left a grammatical trea- 
tise of importance. 

Usher, in discussing Sedulius' Scripture commentaries says: 

"As for the edition of the Scriptures used in Ireland at those 
times, the Latin translation was so received into common use by the 
learned that the principal authority was still reserved to the original 
fountain. The efforts of Sedulius in the Old Testament commend 
to us the Hebreu- verity, and in the New, correct oftentimes the 
vulgar Latin according to the truth of the Greek copies" 

— a remarkable compliment both to the learning of the man, and 
the learning of the Irish schools of that age. 

In poetry Sedulius was versatile as* well as prolific — ranging 
from humorous verse, through idyllic, up to stately odes. Of one 
of his poems, the Contest of the Rose and the Lily, Dr. Sigerson 
says: "It might, for conception and treatment, be one of Moore's, 
it is so light, graceful, and harmonious. It leads the way to the 
lighter poetic literature of Europe. Mingled with the measured 
thread of its hexameters, one hears the musical Irish chimes." 

Virgilius (Fergal), celebrated as a pioneer geometer of his 
day and who was noted for his learning before he left Ireland, 
was a protege of King Pepin, through whom he was, in 772, ap- 
pointed Bishop of Salsburg — while his Irish companion Dobda 
became a teacher there. In that city he rebuilt, in splendid man- 
ner, the monastery of St. Peter. For Chetimar the Duke of Carin- 
thia, he penetrated the forest wilds of that country, preaching and 



IRISH SCHOLARS ABROAD 263 

converting, and ordaining priests — as far as the junction of the 
Drave and the Danube. 

He is described by Gaspard Bruschius as a man of extraordi- 
nary piety and learning, and again by another writer, as a subtle 
philosopher and able mathematician. He astonished the scholars 
by teaching that the earth instead of being flat was a globe, and 
that human beings like those around them probably lived on the 
opposite side of it. The Saxon Boniface, who was then converting 
Germany and who quarrelled with Fergal and other Irish mission- 
aries, brought complaint to Rome against him, accusing him of 
heresy — evidently misunderstanding or misinterpreting Virgilius' 
doctrine. Virgilius had previously had a noted theological con- 
troversy over infant baptism with Boniface, which when it had 
been referred to Pope Zachary, was decided in Virgilius' favour. 
On this new dispute, however. Pope Zachary replied to Boniface: 
"If Virgilius maintains that there is another world, and other 
men, another sun and another moon, he must be suspended from 
the council, the church, and the priesthood." 

It is significant, however, that he was neither excommunicated 
nor suspended — from which it may be inferred that he explained 
his doctrine in its true light to Zachary. In 1233 Virgilius was 
canonised by Gregory the Ninth. 

In the middle of the ninth century it was that Moengal, return- 
ing from Rome with the Irish Bishop Marcus, his uncle, settled 
at the Irish foundation of St. Gall on Lake Constance — to which 
monastery his uncle bequeathed his books. Moengal by his learn- 
ing was destined to make still more famous this monastery to 
which many of his countrymen before him had brought fame. It 
had become, it is said, the most venerated monastery in the in- 
terior of Europe, and for three hundred years was looked upon 
as a chief nursery of lore. Dr. Ferdinand Keller says that it was 
the Irish teachers there who "by their instructions in Greek, 
rhetoric, and other subjects contributed not a little to the forma- 
tion of the scientific character which distinguished this monastery." 

Moengal here taught theology and sacred science. Zimmer 
says he excelled in these subjects, "as well as in every other branch 
of knowledge." He furthermore made St. Gall famous for its 
musical teaching, to which Moengal seems to have devoted special 
attention. Three famous pupils of his were Notker le Begue, 
Rappert, and Tuotillo, men who held foremost places in their 
century — famous as musicians, and famous along other lines. The 
versatile Tuotillo was an orator, sculptor, painter, architect, gold- 
smith, composer and player on all kinds of instruments. 



264 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Of this man Moengal, Zimmer says: "In my opinion there 
were few men, who, in the middle of the ninth century, exerted a 
more beneficent influence on the German mind, in the cultivation 
of the higher arts and sciences, than Moengal and his followers." 
And Wattenbach says of Moengal and the other Irish teachers 
here: "We may judge of their industry by the study of Greek, 
the love of music, and the skill in various arts, which distinguishes 
the monastery of St. Gall above all others." 

It is practically agreed by all authorities that the most remark- 
able scholar known to Europe in the ninth century, whom wor- 
shipping Continental scholars called "the Master," was John Sco- 
tiis Erigina (John the Scot, from Eirinn), philosopher, theologian, 
linguist, logician, mathematician, and poet, whom King Charles 
the Bald made head of the Royal school in Paris. He was a genius 
of such brilliancy as dawns upon the world only once in any cen- 
tury. Zimmer says of him: "He was the greatest thinker of his 
age, and his philosophic works mark an epoch in the world's 
literature." And Archbishop Healy, talking of his five books, De 
Divisione Naturae, which he pronounces "profound, original and 
learned," says: "No other scholar of western Europe, in any age, 
was so filled with the spirit of the philosophy and theology of 
the Greeks, and his mind was closely akin to the mind of Greece." 

He was a distinguished controversialist. And on the two 
great problems which were agitating and dividing the theological 
world at that time, Predestination and the Real Presence, he 
jumped into the forefront of the fight, and laid about him with true 
Irish vim and skill. His book on Predestination caused a sensa- 
tion which could hardly be said to be allayed for generations. The 
doctrine which he expounded on the Real Presence, which he held 
to be both a memorial and a reality, almost brought him under a 
cloud: for enemies stressed the memorial side of his argument, 
and gave to the world the impression that he taught it was a 
memorial only. 

The cloud darkened his career later, when, without getting 
the usual apostolic sanction required in such cases, he translated 
from the Greek, and published, the writings of the pseudo Diony- 
sius, who was alleged to have preached and died in France. The 
Pope reprimanded his patron. King Charles the Bald, and ordered 
him to send John away. He must have recovered his standing 
though, for, only some years later, Anastasius, the Papal librarian 
- — who had declared himself amazed by the brilliancy with which 
John had translated Dionysius — says i-n a letter to Charles the 



IRISH SCHOLARS ABROAD 265 

Bald, written in March, 875, that John was a man eminent for 
his sanctity, holy, learned, and humble. And he says he must have 
been influenced by the spirit of God in making his wonderful trans- 
lation. 

D'Arbois de Jubainville says of John: 

"He was a disciple of Plato, whose Timaeus he appears to have 
read in the original. And he has founded on the doctrines of that 
celebrated Greek writer, a system of philosophy as astonishing for 
its time, as it is dangerous for its temerity." ^ 

Of him and his patron Charles, it is told that once, at the royal 
dinner-table, when the king felt prompted to dazzle his courtiers 
by a sharpening of his wit upon the Scot, he asked John, across 
the table, what was the difference between a Scot and a sot — to 
which Scotus replied: "Only the table, sire." 

The Cathedral school in Wurtzburg late in the eleventh cen- 
tury was taught by the Irish savant, David, who became chaplain 
and historian to the Emperor Henry V and accompanied the 
emperor to Rome in iioo. 

The scholarship of holy Marianus Scotus of Donegal has 
already been referred to. There was another Irish Marianus, 
tutor of Pope Adrian, who taught in the royal school in Paris, 
about the same time that Marianus Scotus was doing his good 
work in Ratisbon. And this latter Marianus only accidentally es- 
capes the oblivion to which hundreds and thousands of his exiled 
learned countrymen were consigned. He seems to have retired in 
his old age to the monastery of his namesake at Ratisbon. And 
when Abbot Gregory, who was a successor of Holy Marianus, 
visited Adrian in Rome, that Pope paid a wonderful tribute to 
Marianus the Master. The incident Is set down in the Chronicles 
of Ratisbon, which says: "A distinguished Irish ecclesiastic, Ma- 
rianus, entered St. James's, who had long taught the seven liberal 
and other arts in Paris. Wh^ Gregory was at Rome, Pope 
Adrian inquired about his old preceptor, and Gregory answered, 
'He is well, and with us at Ratisbon.' Said Adrian: 'God be 
praised ! I know not in the Catholic Church another abbot [than 
you, Gregory] who has under him a man so excellent in wisdom, 
discretion, genius, eloquence, than this same Marianus.' " 



3 Usher says that Erigina translated the ethics of Aristotle into Qialdaic, 
Arabic, and Latin — but the Continental writers who have written upon Erigina 
do not corroborate him in recording this remarkable feat. 



266 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

These we have touched on are but a few of the galaxy of Irish 
scholars whose brilHancy dispelled the darkness, which, in those 
centuries had threatened to overwhelm Europe. 

Same books as for preceding two chapters, and; 

Reeves, The Rev. Wm., D.D.: On Augustin, an Irish Writer of the Sev- 
cnth Century. Proc R. I. A, 1861. 



CHAPTER XXX 

THE VIKINGS IN IRELAND 

The history of the Viking period, which began in the eighth cen- 
tury and lasted for about four hundred years, reads like a fairy 
tale. There were two impelling motives which led to the emigra- 
tion of the Vikings, or "men of the bays," for such is the meaning 
of the name by which they have made themselves famous. These 
were the inadequate economic resources of their country, due to 
over-population, and a desire to seek warmer and more fruitful 
lands. Coupled with this was a spirit of adventure. 

At first the Vikings confined themselves to their native fiords 
whence, in their long open boats, they would dart out and pounce 
upon some passing vessel. But they soon extended the field of 
their operations and undertook expeditions to more remote and 
less known regions, which they laid waste and plundered. Piracy 
in those days was not regarded as an ignoble profession. About 
the year 850, they made their way over the stormy north sea to 
Iceland, where, intrepid sailors as they were, they learned that 
Irish monks had been there before them. Thence they sailed to 
Greenland, to Vinland the Good and even reached the coasts of 
North America. In the east and south, they were no less enter- 
prising and successful. 

In the tenth century we find these adventurous sea-rovers mak- 
ing permanent settlements on the continent of Europe. Bands of 
them sailed down the coast and forced the king of France to yield 
to them the fair province ever afterwards known by their name, 
the Duchy of Normandy. More of them went up the Rhine, the 
Loire, and the Gironde, and fought the Moors on the banks of 
the Guadalquivir. Others of them pushed on past the Pillars of 
Hercules into the Mediterranean and built a powerful kingdom 
in Italy. Still others even found their way to Greece and the 
Black Sea. They planted colonies on the coast of Prussia, rounded 
the North Cape and discovered a route by water to the White Sea. 
By way of the Dnieper, the Dniester, the Volga and the northern 
stretches of the Dvina, their enterprising hucksters and freebooters 

267 



268 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

penetrated into the interior of Russia, and in the year 862 laid 
the foundations, at Novgorod, of the kingdom out of which has 
grown the modern Russia. Still more of them sailed down the 
Volga to the Caspian and, by the Dnieper, entered the Bosphorus 
and nearly succeeded in capturing the capital of the Sultan. 

At the other extreme end of Europe more than half of Britain 
was already in their power. The kingdom of Alfred the Great 
was threatened and shaken to its foundation, and the outlying 
islands were entirely occupied by them. They placed a Danish 
sovereign on the throne of England. Indeed at one time, that is 
about the middle of the ninth century, it looked as if the Vikings 
were on the point of becoming masters of the greater part of 
northern and western Europe. But their victorious career was 
stopped for all time and the western world saved from becoming 
Norse by the final defeat which they met with in Ireland. 

Intercourse between the northern lands and Ireland must have 
begun at a very early date. It was only a few days' journey, and, 
as the Viking vessels were galleys propelled by oars as well as 
by sails, they were independent of the weather. The Irish traded 
and married with them a century before the invasion. Even in 
the old Irish epic of the heroic period, there is mention of war- 
riors from Norway, "the Northern Way," and of Irish chieftains 
who were levying tribute on the Shetlands, the Orkneys, and the 
Faroes. The first acceptedly correct information of the Norsemen 
in "the Isles of the Foreigners," as the western islands were called, 
dates from the early part of the seventh century. In the year 
617 they burned the cloister of Eig, slew the Abbot Donnan and 
fifty-two of his companions, and,. using the western islands as step- 
ping stones, they robbed and ravaged their way down as far as the 
Isle of Man. It was perhaps in the same year that they laid 
waste Tory Island off the coast of Donegal. These attacks lasted 
some four or five years, and were followed by more than a cen- 
tury and a half of peace, during which the Norse and Irish mingled 
and settled down on friendly terms. 

In the year 794 occurred the first powerful Norse attacks in 
Irish waters, when the sea-robbers landed on Rechru, now Lam- 
bay, off Howth, which they devastated, and some other small 
islands north of Dublin, and simultaneously they launched attacks 
at such distant points as the Isle of Skve and Glamorganshire in 
South Wales. These Vikings had no difficulty in landing, plunder- 
ing, and getting away to their ships, but they brought away what 
was still more valuable to those who followed them in their pro- 
fession, namely, tales of bright green fields, of rich fertile soil, 



THE VIKINGS IN IRELAND 269 

in a word, of a land that was well worth fighting for. Such re- 
ports brought Vikings in more frequent bands and in greater and 
greater numbers to Ireland. As yet, however, they were only 
reconnoitring parties who confined themselves to the islands and 
forelands and did not interfere with the internal affairs of the 
country. Sometimes they showed poor judgment in choosing their 
points of attack, as in the year 823 when they scaled the almost 
inaccessible Scelic Michll (the Skelligs), far out in the Atlantic, 
and carried off the hermit Etgal, perhaps in spite at finding no 
treasure on that barren, wind-swept rock. During the next two 
or three years, among other misdeeds, they burned Bangor, an 
easy prey because of its proximity to the sea, murdered its monks 
and scholars and violated the sanctuary. 

At the confluence of the Liftey and a small stream called thfc 
Poddle, was a village which the Irish had founded at least two 
centuries earlier and which they called, and still call, Ath Cliath, 
"the Ford of the Hurdles." It was also named Dubhlinn, "Black- 
pool," from the dark colour of the water under the bog. The 
Norsemen were struck by the excellent location of the village and, 
consequently, about the year 837, they threw up a strong earthen 
fort on the hill where now stands the Castle, and for nearly two 
hundred years Dublin remained an exclusively Norwegian or Dan- 
ish city and the capital and headquarters of the Vikings in west- 
ern Europe. The Irish, however, still regarded Armagh as their 
national capital. 

When, about the year 832, the Norse felt ready to make their 
first great attack on Ireland In force, they had the advantage of 
having as their leader one of the most extraordinary and capable 
figures in Nordic history. This was the famous Norwegian war- 
rior Tuirgeis. Tuirgels, like most of his race who came after 
him, was filled with ambition to establish a great pagan empire 
and to make himself lord of Ireland, as his countrymen had made 
themselves masters of England and Normandy. He came with a 
great fleet of 120 ships, which held some ten thousand or twelve 
thousand picked men, and which he divided Into two divisions. 
One squadron of sixty ships entered the Liffey, while Turgeis 
himself with the other sailed up the Boyne. From these points 
small bands of Invaders entered Into the Interior of 'the country, 
carrying their boats overland with them when necessary, spread 
here and there and made the first permanent Norse settlements In 
Ireland. Turgeis confined his operations to the north. He pitched 
his headquarters at the southern extremity of Lough Ree, near 
where Athlone now stands, and threw up earthworks along the 



270 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

upper courses of the Shannon and a line of forts across the coun- 
try from Carlingford Bay to Connacht. He even got some sup- 
port from the^ Irish and for a time it looked as if the whole north- 
ern portion of the island might speedily fall under his sway. 

His design included the supplanting of Christianity by the 
heathenism of his own country. With that end in view he took 
possession, some years previously, of Armagh, Ireland's Holy City, 
which contained the staff which Christ himself was said to have 
given to St. Patrick, and where the Abbot, who was regarded as 
the spiritual head of Ireland, resided. Turgeis drove away "the 
Follower of St. Patrick," converted the church into a pagan temple 
and made himself high priest of the new religion. As if that 
sacrilege was not sufficient to arouse the special anger of the Irish, 
he is said to have enthroned his wife Otta upon the high altar of 
the principal church at Clonmacnois, the next most holy place in 
Ireland, situated on the eastern bank of the Shannon in the midst 
of the meadows. From that sacred seat Otta, who seems to have 
been a sibyl as well as a priestess, dehvered oracles in magic 
strains to the people. 

These things took place in or about the year 845, and for 
some years all the foreigners in Ireland recognised Turgeis as 
their sovereign, though it could hardly be said that he had founded 
a kingdom. His ablest opponent among the native chieftains was 
Niall, provincial king of Ulster. Shortly afterwards, or about 
the year 845, he was, somehow, taken prisoner by Maelsechlainn 
(Malachy) king of Meath, and drowned in Loch Owel, either as 
a criminal or by the miracles of the saints, or, according to the 
legends, through a stratagem of Maelsechlainn's daughter who, 
accompanied by fifteen young Irish warriors disguised as maidens, 
kept tryst with him, and fifteen of his captains. After his death, 
the Norsemen abandoned their settlements on Lough Ree, moved 
up the Shannon and fought their way along the rivers and lakes 
to the Sligo coast where a fleet had assembled to carry them home. 
Thereafter the tide of victory turned for a while in favour of 
the Irish, and a new epoch began in the history of the Scandina- 
vian invasion of Ireland. Hitherto the Vikings, like their great 
leader Turgeis, were all of Norwegian stock, but with a few Danes 
and Swedes among them. During the tenth and eleventh cen- 
turies, however, the Danes, a people of distinct origin, who at 
that time were ravaging the southern and western coasts of Eng- 
land, took the lead in Viking activities. They were better organ- 
ised than the Norse and had a more centralised government, and 
they could always fall back on their kingdom in Northumbria, 



THE VIKINGS IN IRELAND 271 

with its capital at York. They were jealous of the successes which 
the Norwegians had met with in Ireland and they soon proceeded 
to deprive them of the fruits of their victories, so that it was not 
primarily owing to a desire to attack the Irish but purely by acci- 
dent that the Danes came to Ireland and made it the battleground 
on which to settle their differences with their cousins from Nor- 
way. In the words of the annalist (847), "they disturbed Ire- 
land between them." At first the Irish called all these northern 
raiders indiscriminately Genti, "the heathen," or Gaill "the 
strangers," or Lochlannaigh. Later, however, when Irish writers 
felt the need of making a clear distinction between the two waves 
of invasion, they either limited the name Lochlannaigh to the Nor- 
wegians and applied the name Danair to the Danes, or, more 
commonly, they called the Vikings of Norwegian descent white 
heathens, while those of Danish descent they called black heathens.* 
The year 847 marks the first sudden descent of the Danes, 
"in seven score ships," upon the eastern shores of Ireland. They 
at once proceeded to attack the Norwegians and to contest the 
possession of the coast settlements with them. In that year the 
Norwegian chieftain Earl Tomar was slain in the battle of Sciath- 
Nechtin. In 850 the "Blacks" seized and plundered Dublin and 
in the following year they defeated the "Whites" decisively at 
Carlingford Lough. The battle was a fierce one and is said to 
have continued three days and three nights. At first the Norwe- 
gians were successful, but finally the Danes, it is said, by calling 
upon St. Patrick for help, were victorious. After the battle they 
remembered their promise and sent a huge vat filled with silver 
and gold to the shrine of the Apostle. Maelsechlainn (Malachy) I, 
who was king of Ireland at that time, dispatched an embassy to 

^ This was not due to the colour of the hair or complexion, for the overwhelm- 
ing mass of the foreigners, whether Norwegians or Danes, must have been all 
fair and ruddy. It is to be found only in the fact that the Danes were clad in 
body armour. The Irish themselves fought in their ordinary dress and mantles, 
except in combats of special danger when they donned breastplates and aprons of 
leather. They used light javelins for throwing and longer and stouter spears for 
thrusting, and swords, and carried a shield of wicker work to defend the body. 
The first comers among the Norwegians likewise wore only a tunic of leather, 
I but the Danes wore dark metal coats of mail, helmets and vizors, and were partial 
^ to the battle-axe. As they were the first mail-clad warriors the Irish had ever 
seea, it is no wonder if they seemed to them to be "dark blue" or "blue-green," 
. as they called them. There are many references in the old Irish chronicles and 
I sagas to the mail-clad armour and battle-axes of the foreigners and to the black 
I ships in which they cams to Ireland. "For the bodies and skins and hearts of the 
] bright champions of Alunster were quickly pierced through the fine linen garments, 
^ and their very sharp blades took no effect." This advantage which the Danes pos- 
' sessed helps to explain the successes which thev met with in the early years of 
I their invasions. But the Irish soon learned in tne hard school of experience how 
to imitate the superior weapons, armour and science of warfare of the enemy. 



272 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

the victors. Five thousand Norwegians with their kings lay dead 
on the field. The messengers arrived just as the Danes were pre- 
paring their evening meal. They had their kettles set up on stakes 
driven into the bodies of the slain and the corpses crackled with 
the heat. The Irish envoys expressed their horror at the awful 
sight and reproached the Danes for their barbarity, but the Danes 
replied that the Norwegians would have treated them in the same 
manner had they won the battle. 

The next year (852), the Norwegians rallied, and a new 
warlord arrived to take command over them. This was Olafr 
enn hvitl, "Olaf the White," as he Is known In Icelandic history, 
or Amhlaobh, In the Irish records, a man of royal descent and 
belonging to the same race as the famous Turgels. In the follow- 
ing year (853) he and his countryman Ivar assumed joint king- 
ship over the foreigners In Ireland and set up their capital at 
Dublin. From there the Norwegians gradually gained ground 
and established vassal states and a string of trading posts and 
stations for their fleets along the coast. Many of these settle- 
ments bear Scandinavian names from fiords, Strangford and Car- 
lingford. In the north and Wexford and Waterford In the south, 
for example. The last of these towns was originally called Port 
Lalrge (Portlaw), by the Irish, but the foreigners renamed it 
Vedrafiordhr, "Weatherhaven." 

The most important artery reaching into the heart of Ireland 
is the River Shannon. On Its banks the Vikings, who were most 
probably Danes, founded and fortified, In the second half of the 
ninth century, a city which they called Limerick, "Limerick of the 
mighty ships," as one of the old chroniclers calls It. The city 
flourished and exerted an Influence over all Munster. There was 
close connection between it and the distant Hebrides, and It was 
not long before It became a dangerous rival even of the Norwe- 
gian kingdom at Dublin, and for a long time there was enmity 
between them. The two parties engaged in raidlngs and hostings, 
just like the native clansmen. Now one side and now the other 
invited the Irish to help them, and Irish chieftains in turn, in their 
internecine wars, sought the aid of the foreigners. The first Irish 
king who is said to have made such an alliance was Aed Finn- 
liath, father of Niall Glundubh, king of Ulster in the middle of 
the ninth century. But, Indeed, from the time of the first coming 
of the Northmen to their final defeat, there probably never was 
a war In which they and the Irish were not, to some degree, banded 
together. 

Irish literature of a thousand years ago is obsessed with the 



THE VIKINGS IN IRELAND 273 

spectre of the Norse occupation of Ireland, and, if we are to be- 
lieve the native annalists, a night of misery had really settled down 
on the country with the coming of the Vikings. On the occasion 
of a raid, villages were burned and sacked and there was whole- 
sale slaughter and enslavement of men, women and children. The 
foreign soldiers were billeted on the Irish farmers and a heavy 
tax was laid upon all the people. In default of paying the tax, 
"nose-money" (a custom which they had brought from their own 
country), that is, the loss of the nose, was exacted. In the words 
of one of the old chroniclers, "even though a man had but one 
cow, he mJght not milk it for a child one night old, nor for a sick 
person, but he had to keep it for the tax collector and the foreign 
soldiers." 

There were no walled towns in those days in Ireland and but 
few and scattered villages. The population of the country was 
comparatively sparse. Life, except at the courts of chiefs, was 
simple and primitive. The people were mostly engaged in cattle 
raising, and their wealth consisted chiefly of flocks and herds and 
wearing apparel. The nation was broken up into numerous clans, 
Avhich of course stood In the way of national union. 

By the end of the ninth century there were frequent alliances 
by marriage between the two peoples. According to legendary 
history, such marriages had taken place as early as the second 
century. Naturally the annalists tell of such marriages only in 
the case of Irish ladies of high degree and Viking chieftains but 
they must have been even more common among the people. The 
first historical instance of such marriages was that of larnkne to 
Muirgel, daughter of Maelsechlainn (Malachy) I, Emperor of 
Ireland about the middle of the ninth century. About the same 
time Amhlaobh, son of the king of Norway, married the daughter 
of Aed mac Neill. It scarcely ever appears that the wishes of 
the ladies most concerned were consulted and, as an old Irish poet 
remarks, "by no means was it happy for them." Some of these 
women settled down with their husbands in Ireland. Others fol- 
lowed them to Norway or Iceland, and many other Irish women, 
even of the highest class of society, were carried away as slaves. 
Thus, inter-marriage and the adoption of Christianity by the ma- 
jority of the Norsemen, were strong helps towards the assimila- 
tion of the invader. 

Another help was the custom of fosterage, in vogue among 
both peoples, according to which Irish children were sometimes 
adopted even into families of their country's enemies. Some of 
these children, who had been adopted at the most impressionable 



274 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

age, forsook the nationality and religion of their parents and em- 
braced that of their fosterers. These apostate Irish, together with 
companies of mixed Irish and foreigners and Gaelic speaking 
Norsemen from the Hebrides and other western islands, became 
bandits, scourged the country and plundered the Irish and Norse 
indiscriminately. The Chronicles call them Gaill-Gaedhel, *'the 
foreign Irish," but the people knew them as "the sons of death," 
because of their ferociousness. They were especially numerous 
and active about the middle of the ninth century and their most 
conspicuous leader was Caitill Finn, "Ketil the White," a man of 
Norse descent. Finally the Irish chieftains and the Norwegian 
kings of Dublin joined forces to destroy them and, in the year 
857, Ketil.was killed by King Amhlaobh of Dublin, who com- 
manded a troop of independent Norsemen in the south of Ireland. 

As in some other countries, France, for example, up to the 
ninth century, the warrior-churchman was a conspicuous figure in 
Ireland in the ninth-tenth centuries. The most celebrated of all 
the priest-warriors was the Abbot-Archbishop Cormac mac Cuilen- 
nain, who reigned as king of Munster from 901 to 908. He was 
also an accomplished scribe and scholar. Besides his native Gaelic 
he knew Latin, Welsh, Anglo-Saxon, Old Norse, and some Greek 
and Hebrew, and he compiled the Psalter of Cashel and the Sa7ias 
Cormaic, "Cormac's Glossary," the very first comparative ver- 
nacular dictionary in any language in modern Europe. In the 
words of an old annalist, "he was the most learned of all who 
came or shall come of the men of Erin forever." Cormac was a 
man of peace and would, no doubt, have preferred to devote him- 
self to the quiet pursuits of the student, but, unfortunately for 
himself, he followed the advice of his turbulent and warlike coun- 
sellor, Flaithbhertach (Flaherty), Abbot of Scattery island in 
the Shannon, who instigated the king to go to war with the men 
of Leinster. A pitched battle was fought in the year 908 at Belach 
Mugna (Ballaghmoon), in Kildare, a couple of miles north of 
Carlow. It was a hopeless attack for the men of Munster and 
ended in their complete rout and destruction. Clergy and laity 
were slaughtered without distinction. Cormac himself was thrown 
from his horse which slipped on the blood soaked ground and his 
neck broken. The enemy thrust spears into his body and cut off 
his head. And thus, in the words of the Four Masters, fell "the 
bishop, the father confessor, the renowned illustrious doctor. King 
of Cashel, King of larmumha; O God! Alas for Cormac 1" 

A son of the romantic Gormlaith — who had been betrothed to 
Cormac before he became a religious — was Muirchertach (Mur- 



THE VIKINGS IN IRELAND 275 

togh), a soldier of the first rank and heir to the throne of Ireland. 
He seems to have sworn to avenge his father's death, and from 
918 to 943 he carried on the war victoriously against the Danes 
of Dublin and attacked their oversea settlements in the Hebrides 
and on the north coast of Scotland, In the depth of the winter 
of 941, when he was least expected by his enemies, he made a 
hostage-levying circuit of Ireland at the head of a thousand picked 
men whom he had clad in leather cloaks, whence he is known as 
"Muirchertach of the Leather Cloaks." He, too, was finally de- 
feated by the foreigners. 

During the first half of the tenth century the Danes gained 
possession of large parts of the interior of the country. In 914 
strong reinforcements arrived at Waterford. They again sailed 
up the Shannon in a great fleet and into Lough Ree where they 
plundered the islands and burned Clonmacnois. Their leader this 
time was Tomrair, king, or son of the king, of Denmark, who, 
in the words of the annalist, under the year 922, is reported to 
have gone "to hell with his pains, as he deserved." By the middle 
of the century, however, fortune again turned in favour of the Irish. 
They had learned how to build warships and to employ naval tac- 
tics after the manner of the Northmen. The most celebrated of 
the naval battles in which they engaged is connected with the name 
of Cellachan of Cashei, who began to reign in 934 and who won 
back Cashei and most of Munster from the Danes. He was after- 
wards taken prisoner but was rescued in the course of the famous 
sea fight, which took place in 950-951 in the bay of Dundalk, the 
foreigners being under the command of Sitric, who was drowned 
in the battle. After the fight, Cellachan entered Dublin, collected 
great stores of cattle, gold, silver and other treasures, burned the 
town and departed. 

The most famous hero of the Danish period in Ireland and 
one of the most famous in all Irish history was the celebrated 
Brian mac Cenneidigh, son of Kennedy, chief of Thomond, in- 
cluding the eastern portion of the present county of Clare, and 
hereditary ruler of North Munster, He was born probably about 
the year 941 and is known to history as Brian Boru, which he 
took from the name of the town of Borime, near Killaloe, on the 
right bank of the Shannon. He was the youngest of twelve 
brothers, all of whom fell in battle, except Marcan v/ho was a 
religious and head of the clergy of Munster, and Anluan who died 
of a severe illness, 

Brian's eldest brother was Mathghamhain (Mahon) who suc- 
ceeded his father, and in 968 became king of Munster. Mahcn 



276 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

was engaged almost constantly in war with the Danes and with the 
Leinstermexi who, as a rule, were in alliance with them, "for there 
were many Gael who stood by him (Sitric of Limerick), not so 
much through love of him as through hatred of the Dal Cais (the 
Dalcassians, the family to which Kennedy belonged)." In 959 
Mahon and the Munstermen plundered Clonmacnois. In 965 they 
destroyed Limerick, and in 968 they fought a decisive battle with 
the Irish-Norse at Sulchoid, about two and a half miles northwest 
of Tipperary. The battle lasted from sunrise till midday and 
ended in the complete rout of the allies. The prisoners were then 
collected on the hill of Saingel, near Limerick, and "every one 
that was fit for war was put to death and every one that was fit 
for a slave v/as enslaved." In 976 Mahon was betrayed, some 
say by an Irish prince, and treacherously put to death by his Norse 
and Irish enemies. Brian, then thirty-five years of age, became 
king of Munster and took quick vengeance on the assassins. In 
three years' time he was the undisputed king of the southern half 
of Ireland. 

In 980 Maelsechlainn (Malachy) II, surnamed Mor, "the 
Great," king of Meath, became emperor of Ireland, and in the 
same year he won a victory over the Danes at the battle of Tara. 
Somewhere about that time Brian became the bitter rival of Mal- 
achy and made up his mind to dispute the throne with him. In 
985, with a great fleet, he sailed up the Shannon to Lough Ree, 
raided Meath, and did great damage to Connacht. For a few 
years there was show of friendship between the two kings, and 
in 998 they came to an understanding, and made a truce accord- 
ing to which, on certain conditions, Malachy was limited as sole 
sovereign of the northern, and Brian, of the southern half, of 
Ireland. Thereupon the Leinstermen allied themselves with the 
Dublin Danes and revolted. Brian and Malachy united their 
forces, "to the great joy of the Irish," as the Four Masters say, 
and, in 999, defeated them "with red slaughter" at Glenmama, 
near Dunlavin, County Wicklow. Seven thousand Danes are said 
to have fallen in the battle. The Irish then marched to Dublin 
which they sacked of its accumulated treasures, ravaged Leinster 
and expelled King Sitric, with whom Brian himself was afterwards 
to make peace and alliance. 

The two Irish kings soon quarrelled again, and in the year 
1002, Malachy, fiading that there was defection in his ranks, was 
compelled to resign his supremacy to the superior force of Brian 
and to step down to the position of a provincial king. The fact 
is Brian violated the treaty. As Tighernach, the annalist, says 



THE VIKINGS IN IRELAND 277 

this was the first "treacherous turning of Brian against Malachy.'* 

Both Malachy and Brian were extraordinary men and it would 
seem as if Ireland was not big enough for both of them. Of the 
two, Malachy played the nobler part. He was generous, whole- 
hearted, and loyal to his promises, and Brian's superior in un- 
selfish patriotism and in readiness to sacrifice personal pride and 
personal rights to the welfare and interests of his country. On 
the other hand, Brian was the more forceful, energetic and ca- 
pable. He was clearly a usurper and filled with ambition. Yet 
had he not done what he did, which, after all, is condoned by mod- 
ern statecraft and was no more treacherous than what has hap- 
pened hundreds of times in the history of other countries, Malachy 
or some other rival would undoubtedly have attempted to over- 
reach him. Had he begun his career at an earlier age and had he 
not had to contend with foreign invasion, he would no doubt have 
succeeded in welding the Irish clans into a strongly centralised and 
compact empire. That design probably never entered into his 
calculations. As it was, he did achieve that result to a certain ex- 
tent and his reign was remarkably successful, prosperous and happy. 

He had his royal seat at Kincora, a well situated place near 
Killaloe, on the Shannon, where he ruled with a steady hand, es- 
tablished his pov/er and authority on a firm basis, enforced law 
and order, imparted rigid and impartial justice, and dispensed a 
royal hospitality. Though much of his time was given to prepara- 
tion for war, in which, whenever occasion offered, he always proved 
himself to be a good soldier, a brave warrior and a skilful strate- 
gist, he still found time to build forts, roads and churches. He 
founded schools and encouraged learning, dispatched agents 
abroad to buy books, and during his reign the bardic schools be- 
gan to rise again. He had difiiculties with his own people, and 
indeed his title as emperor was never admitted by the north. Nor 
were the Leinstermen any too friendly and he had to maintain 
permanent garrisons in parts of Munster. 

On one of several royal progresses which he made through 
the country, about the year 1004, he invaded Ulster and visited 
Armagh where he gave alms of a golden ring in which were twenty 
ounces of gold and where his official secretary and counsellor, and 
former instructor Maelsuthain O Cearbhaill (O'Carroll), of Loch 
Lein, reputed to be the best scholar in Ireland, inscribed in the 
Book of Armagh these words in Latin: "I, Maelsuthain, write 
this in the presence of Brian, Emperor of the Irish." 

Brian even attempted to extend his power beyond the limits 
of Ireland. In the year 1005 he fitted out a fleet manned by 



278 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Norsemen from Dublin, Waterford, and Wexford and Irish and 
pillaged the shores and levied tribute on the inhabitants of north- 
ern and western Britain. He did not extirpate the Danes who 
were domiciled in Ireland or banish them from the kingdom, but 
treated them with the utmost leniency, and recognised the element 
of strength they v/ould add to promote commerce and develop the 
resources of the country. In return for the Dublin Danes bind- 
ing themselves to follow him in his wars, he was obliged to guar- 
antee them and the other foreigners possession of their territory 
in Ireland. 

In furtherance of this policy or of his personal ambition, he 
found it to his interest to bind this peace by ties of marriage even 
with those who so lately were his bitterest enemies. A few months 
after Glenmama he gave his own daughter by his first wife in mar- 
riage to Sigtryggr (Sitric), his former opponent and king of Dub- 
lin, while he himself, Brian, married, as his second wife, Sitric's 
mother, Gormlaith, a beautiful, powerful and intriguing Irish 
woman. Like her namesake, the gentle and unfortunate poet- 
Queen who lived sixty years before her, Gormlaith had a stormy 
life and her marriage to Brian was her third matrimonial venture. 
She was first married to Malachy the Great, then to Olafr kvaran 
(Amhlaobh "the Shoe"), Danish king of Dublin (celebrated in 
the history of England), by whom she had a son, the Sitric men- 
tioned above; and finally she was married to Brian Boru, and 
was prepared to marry, if one can speak of these connections as 
legal matrimony, for the fourth time, as we shall see later. In 
the words of the sagaman, "Gormlaith was the fairest of all 
women, and 15est gifted in everything that was not in her own 
power, but it was the talk of men that she did all things ill over 
which she had any power." 

It was through Gormlaith's machinations and deadly hatred 
that Brian lost his life, and the last act in the long Dano-Irish 
drama was effected. A series of petty family quarrels precipitated 
the denouement. One day, it was in the year 1013, the Leinster 
prince Maolmordha (Molloy), who was Gormlaith's brother and 
consequently Brian's brother-in-law, and in alliance Vv^ith the Dub- 
lin Danes, was bringing three large pine masts for shipping, prob- 
ably as a tribute, to Brian at Kincora. As his men were climbing 
a boggy hill near Roscrea a quarrel broke out between them and 
other clansmen, and Maolmordha, giving a hand .to support one 
of the masts, tore a silver button from a tunic which Brian had 
given him. On arriving at Kincora he asked his sister to mend 
the tunic for him, but instead she threw it into the fire, saying he 



THE VIKINGS IN IRELAND 279 

ought to be ashamed to accept any gift from Brian and thus admit 
his subjection to him, an indignity, she said, which neither his 
father nor grandfather would ever have suffered. The taunt left 
a rankling wound in the heart of Maolmordha. On another day 
Maolmordha, looking on while Brian's eldest son, Murchadii 
(Morrough) and his cousin Conang were playing chess at Kin- 
cora, suggested a move which lost Murchadh the game. Then 
Murchadh angrily exclaimed, "That was like the advice you gave 
the Danes which lost them the battle of Glenmama" — to which 
Maolmordha replied, "Yes, and I will give them advice again, 
and this time they will not be defeated." 

One word led to another, and the men parted in anger. When 
Brian heard of the altercation, he sent a man post-haste after 
Maolmordha with gifts to appease him and to invite him back 
to Kincora. The messenger overtook him on the bridge of Killa- 
loe, but Maolmordha broke the man's head and kept on his way 
till he reached home where he made known to his people the great 
insult he had received from Brian's son. He then joined forces 
with O'Neill, O'Ruarc, Sitric of Dublin and others and attacked 
Brian's ally, Malachy, near Sord (Swords) a few miles north of 
Dublin, and defeated him. Malachy appealed to Brian to come 
to his aid, but Brian was short of supplies and could furnish no 
assistance. 

In the meantime Brian had put away Gormlaith, who was then 
free to vent all her spleen on him. She was especially anxious to 
win the help of Sigurd, Earl of the Orkneys. Sigurd, who was 
Irish on his mother's side, promised to come, provided, in case 
of success, he should be king of Ireland and have the hand of 
Gormlaith. For he had ambition to establish a Danish dynasty 
similar to the one which his countrymen, Svein, and his son, Cnut, 
had shortly before founded in England. Though his mother wove 
for him a "raven banner" with mighty spells which was to bring 
victory to the host before whom it was flown but death to the 
man who bore it, it was against his own forebodings and those 
of his men that Sigurd was induced to take part in the expedition. 
Sitric next sought help from two Viking brothers who lived on 
the west coast of the Isle of Man. Ospak was a heathen and 
Brodar had been a Christian but apostatised, and was regarded 
as a kind of magician. He was a very tall man with long black 
hair which he wore tucked in under his belt, and he was clad in a 
coat of mail "which no steel could bite." He too stipulated thrit 
he would come with twenty ships provided he should wed Gorm- 
laith and become king of Ireland. As Sitric was under instructions 



28o THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

to get help at any price, he made no scruple to accept the terms 
on condition that the agreement was to be kept secret. Ospak, 
who was dissatisfied with the arrangement, escaped from his 
brother during the night with his ten ships, sailed round Ireland 
and up the Shannon where he joined Brian and became his ally. 

By Palm Sunday in the year 1014, a great host of the massed 
forces of the Norselands assembled on the shore of Clontarf, a 
few miles north of Dublin. It consisted of 1,000 mail-clad Norse- 
men under Brodar, Vikings from Normandy, Flanders, England 
and Cornwall, and, above all, fierce fighting men from the Ork- 
neys, Shetlands, Hebrides, and other islands off the west coast 
of Scotland, all picked men and most conspicuous for valour of 
the men of their time. With them also were the men of their race 
who had settled in and around Dublin, and the Ui Cinnselaigh 
(Kinsellas) from Wexford and the men of Leinster. These lat- 
ter were under the command of their king Maolmordha. On the 
side of Brian and Ireland were, besides his own people from 
Munster, the men of Connacht and Meath and the Christianised 
Norsemen He also had an auxiliary force from Scotland under 
Domhnall, Great Steward of Mar, but he got no help from Ulster. 

In spite of his seventy-three years of age, Brian wished to lead 
his army in person, but his advisers persuaded him to retire to a 
tent not far from the field and there to await the issue. The real 
commander of the Irish forces was Brian's son, Murchadh, a 
captain of outstanding ability, who stationed himself with a select 
corps of troops from Desmond and Thomond facing Brodar's 
mail-clad warriors. 

On the night before the battle, the Norse said, their old god 
of war, Woden himself, rode up through the dusk on a dapple- 
grey horse, halberd in hand, to take counsel with his champions; 
and there were other portents. Brian was unwilling to fight on 
Good Friday, but it had been prophesied to the Danes that if the 
battle was fought on that day Brian would certainly be slain, but, 
if they fought on any other day, all would fall who were against 
him. So they forced the battle on Good Friday, which fell that 
year on April 23. The combat began at sunrise, when the tide 
was at full, and raged till sunset. This celebrated battle is known 
as the Battle of Brian, or the Battle of the Weir of Clontarf. 
But, as a matter of fact, the scene of the battle was not at Clon- 
tarf at all, but near Clonliffe, between the Liffey and the Tolka, 
in what are now the outlying districts of Dublin north of the Lif- 
fey. In those days the tide flowed over the plain now occupied 
by Merrion Square, College Green and up to the very walls of 



THE VIKINGS IN IRELAND 281 

the Castle. The Norse battle-line extended roughly from the 
Four Courts, Rutland Square and Montjoy Square. It was a 
faulty position, for all retreat was cut off by Tomar's Wood, a 
part of which is the Phoenix Park, stretching from Drumcondra 
towards the Liffey. The Irish lay to the north, their right flank 
at Drumcondra and their left in Clontarf. Both armies are esti- 
mated at about 20,000 men, but the Danes were the better armed, 
many of them being clad in shirts of mail, while most of the Irish 
fought in tunics. Before the battle, Brian is said to have mounted 
his charger and, with a golden-hilted sword in one hand and a 
crucifix in the other, urged on his men to meet the enemy. 

Sitric does not appear to have taken part in the battle, but to 
have held the garrison in reserve behind the walls on the hill of 
the city, where the Danish women, among them Brian's daughter, 
looked on from the battlements; and it appeared to them "that 
not more numerous would be the sheaves floating over a great 
company reaping a field of oats, even though two or three battal- 
ions were working at it, than the hair flying with the wind from 
them, cut away by heavy gleaming axes and by bright flaming 
swords." 

At the first onset, Brian's men came in contact with the mail- 
clad men in the Danish centre and were cut to pieces. But the 
enemy's success was not lasting, and towards evening the efforts 
of the Irish were crowned with success and the day was saved by 
the arrival of Malachy's men who were fresh and unwearied. 

Part of the enemy fled to their ships at Clontarf, but the re- 
turning tide had carried away the boats and prevented the escape 
of most of them. Great numbers were drowned in the sea and 
heaps of them lay dead on the ground. Four thousand of them 
are said to have fallen on Brian's side and 7,000 on his oppo- 
nent's. Both parties lost most of their leaders, including the brave 
Earl Sigurd. 

During the battle Brian was guarded in his tent at Magduma, 
near Tomar's wood, by a "fence of shields," or "skjaldborg," as 
the Danes called it, composed of chosen warriors who sur- 
rounded him with their shields locked together. The king is said 
to have knelt on a cushion with his psalm-book open before him. 
News was falsely brought to him that his son had fallen. Then a 
spy or traitor in the Irish camp, said to be Tadhg O Ceallaigh 
(O'Kelly), king of Ui Maine (Hy-many, counties Galway and 
Roscommon), who afterwards fell in the battle, pointed out Brian's 
position to Brodar. The guard was overcome and, according to 
one account, Brian took his sword, slew the Norse invader and 



2«2 



THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 



then killed himself; but the Norse account is that Brian was slain 
by a blow from Brodar who was slain in turn by an unknown hand. 

It was a costly victory for the Irish; the king himself, the 
heir-apparent (his brave son Murchadh), and the heir apparent's 
heir (Turlough), all fell in the battle. The bodies of the two 
former were brought to Armagh and interred honourably in a 
tomb nearby the sanctuary of Saint Patrick. On the conclusion 
of the battle the troops disbanded, each clan going to its own ter- 
ritory, and Donchadh, Brian's son, who had been away on a forag- 
ing expedition and had taken no part in the battle, took command. 

But the days of Ireland's glory were departed. In the words 
of his eulogist, "Brian was the last man in Erin who was a match 
for a hundred. He was the last man who killed a hundred in one 
day. His was the last step that true valour ever took in Erin!" 
He was a sovereign of whom any nation might justly be proud 
and one of the world's greatest monarchs. Had he or his family 
lived, the chance is that with the prestige of his name and the 
great victory at Clontarf, they would have founded an hereditary 
monarchy which would have put an end to disunion and demoral- 
isation and provided one of the strongest bulwarks against the 
Norman invasion which was soon to fall upon the country. 

But his death and that of his eldest son brought about the 
displacement of the Dalcassians and the restoration of Malachy 
to the throne. In the year after Clontarf, 1015, Malachy led an 
army against Dublin and suppressed the last attempts of the for- 
eigners. He reigned eight years and died in 1022. Brave, mag- 
nanimous, and inspired by a lofty patriotism and chivalry, he was 
the last Irish king to reign without opposition. 

After him, as a consequence of Brian's unfortunate violation 
of the law of the realm, there were few Irish kings who had not 
to fight for the throne instead of being chosen to it according to 
custom. Frequently two or more claimants assumed the title at 
the same time and desolated and distracted the country. These 
men, who are known for the most part as "kings with opposition," 
because they were unable to secure general obedience to their ad- 
ministration of affairs, were weaker than their predecessors and 
their worthless and futile careers only emphasise the greatness of 
Brian and Malachy. For twenty years after Malachy's death, 
the chief government was vested in the hands of two men, neither 
of whom was a king, one being Cuan O Lochan, the king's chief 
poet, and the other a religious of Lismore named Corcran. 

The battle of the Weir of Clontarf was one of the decisive 
battles of history, for it not only warded off Danish rule from 



THE VIKINGS IN IRELAND 283 

Ireland but it probably even altered the whole subsequent history 
of Europe. Had the Danes been victorious and gotten possession 
of Ireland, they would doubtless have founded there a kingdom 
which would have been the greatest step towards the formation 
of a far-flung northern empire, with its centre at London. For 
three centuries they strove desperately for possession of the prize, 
but they were unable to accomplish in those three hundred years 
in Ireland as much as they had accomplished in one year in north- 
ern France and in England. 

After Clontarf the Danes who were left in Ireland settled 
down and became as Irish as the Irish themselves, but nearly 100 
years after the battle the foreigners made a final attempt to get 
control of Ireland. In the year 1098 the famous Norwegian king 
Magnus Barelegs, so called because he dressed in the Irish fash- 
ion, who fills a large place In the romantic history of the period, 
came to Ireland with a mighty force. He had conquered the Heb- 
rides and Man and had already made many visits to Ireland, and 
was more than half Irish in feeling and culture. He used Irish 
in his poems and was In love, as he says, with "the Irish girl whom 
I love better than myself." According to the Manx Chronicle, he 
sent his shoes to Muirchertach, Emperor of Ireland, and ordered 
him to wear them on his shoulders on Christmas day in the pres- 
ence of his ambassador, as a token of submission, and Muircher- 
tach obeyed the command. Other old chronicles say that Magnus 
married Muirchertach's daughter and that afterwards he sent her 
back to her father. When he was killed in battle in Ulster, in the 
year 1103, he left a son, afterwards King Harald Gille, who was 
born, either in Ireland or the Hebrides, of an Irish mother. 

The Viking age was by no means a starless night in Ireland, 
nor was society so horribly disorganised as Is generally believed. 
It was a period marked by the lives of Irish chiefs of outstanding 
ability, of some of the greatest figures In Nordic history, and of 
women of unusual personality. Even In those days of terror and 
danger from foreign invasion, when an enemy fleet stood In every 
port and soldiers were encamped in many parts of the country, 
Ireland was still In the full current of European life. Though 
internecine feuds and battles with the Danes took up much of the 
chieftains' time, other things besides spears and swords were ex- 
changed between the Irish and the Invader. In no other land in 
which these two peoples of such different culture came together 
did each learn so much from the other as in Ireland. In matters 
of agriculture and cattle raising the Irish were the teachers of 
the Norsemen, but in other purely material pursuits the civilisation 



284 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

ft 

of the Norse was superior to that of the Irish. Though by the 
middle of the seventh century, in the pre-Viking period, Ireland 
had made considerable progress in the art of ship construction, it 
was above all from the hardy sailors of the north that they learned 
to build and sail great ships and to organise fleets, to use Iron 
armour, to fight on horseback and no longer from chariots or on 
foot, to build stone forts and bridges, and to live in fortified cities 
surrounded by walls. By the middle of the tenth century, Dublin, 
Limerick, Cork, Waterford, all Viking establishments, were strong 
walled places. 

Nor were the Vikings mere sea robbers; they were merchants 
as well. Since they controlled the seas, for a long time all trade 
and shipping between Limerick and other Irish ports and the west 
of France and Spain was in their hands. They exported Ireland's 
products and imported all that Ireland wanted, as wheat, wine, 
costly silks, and fine leather, and they helped to Introduce foreign 
fashions into Ireland. The first Irish coins that were struck In 
Ireland were minted by Norse kings who held court In Dublin; 
they have been found in Norway and elsewhere, and point to the 
trade carried on between the two countries. The Irish probably 
also adopted the northern system of weights and measures. 

How much Irish society and domestic life were influenced by 
Norse occupation is seen In the Irish language itself, in which there 
is scarcely a word meaning a large ship or Its parts or markets 
or trade that is not borrowed from the Norse, if it is not from 
the Latin. Even the name by which, In English, we call Erin, Is 
from the Old Norse Iraland, and the English names of three of 
the present-day provinces, Munster, Leinster and Ulster, have a 
Norse termination, stadr, "place," added to the Gaelic stem. Don- 
egal (Dun na Gall), "the Fort of the Foreigners," got its name 
from a fort built by the Vikings. But these are the exceptions. 
There are scarcely more than a dozen Norse place names on the 
whole map of Ireland and these are mostly on or near the sea 
coast, while there are over a thousand in middle and northern 
England. This is one of the surest signs that there was no real 
conquest or occupation of the country. The Norse and the Irish 
had to understand each other to some appreciable extent, and It 
was the language of the Invader that gave way to that of the in- 
vaded. 

As a result of Intermarriage, there was an exchange of Irish 
and Scandinavian personal names, and such typical Irish names 
as Cormac, Patrick, Dubthach (Duffy), are found In Norse sagas. 



THE VIKINGS IN IRELAND 285 

The children of these marriages were called Mael-Muire, Gilla 
Patraic, and other Christian names. On the other hand, some 
Norse personal names such as Somhairle (MacSorley) , Raghnall 
(MacRanald), Amhlaobh (MacAuliffe), Dubhghall (Doyle), 
Maghnus (MacManus), lomhar (Maclvors), have become popu- 
lar and important surnames. 

Though the Viking invasions checked the normal development 
of Irish civilisation, undid what the efforts of successive centuries 
had realised, and gave Ireland such a shock that learning scarcely 
ever fully recovered from it, a brilliant intellectual life prevailed 
during that period and, in all the things that pertained to the mind, 
the Irish were far superior to their invaders and Irish genius made 
itself felt upon them. The names of Norse students are found 
among those who attended Ireland's most celebrated university, 
Clonmacnois, in the first half of the eleventh century. Streams 
of professors, students and missionaries continued to flow to the 
continent, some of them no doubt fleeing from the Vikings. 

Irish sculpture, building, metal work, art, and ornament, flour- 
ished and influenced the art of the Scandinavians. The most im- 
portant and most beautifully illuminated manuscripts, both in Latin 
and Irish, date from that period, and some of the greatest poets 
in Irish literature, such as Flann MacLonain, "the Vergil of the 
Gael," Cinaed ua Hartacain, Eochaid O Flinn, Cormacan Eces, 
MacLiag, the court bard of Brian Boru, and many others flour- 
ished in it. It was Irish scholars who introduced the literature of 
Greece and Rome to the men of the north. At the Norwegian 
court of "DubHn of the Festal Drinking Horns," Icelandic skalds 
and Irish bards composed and sang their poems, and Irish and 
Icelandic sagamen, the best story tellers in the world, told their 
stories. The Irish influence on the early literature of Iceland is 
unmistakable. Indeed, the Norse were the imitators of the Irish, 
and certain northern types, motives and forms of style are clearly 
of Irish origin or have been developed through Irish influence. 
The Irish were also of considerable influence in softening the wild 
manners of the Norsemen with whom they came in contact, and, 
above all, it is to the Irish that they owe their Christianity. For 
at least two generations before Clontarf, Christianity had taken 
deep root among the Norse in Ireland, and, by the end of the 
tenth or beginning of the eleventh century, Dublin was a complete 
Christian city with churches and cloisters and was known as Ath 
Cliath na cloc, "Dublin, rich in bells," Ath Cliath na land 's na 
lecht, "Dublin the city of churches and graveyards." 



286 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Besides the general histories of Ireland and works in German and the 

Scandinavian languages (which give the best account of the period), the 

following books are recommended: 

C. F. Keary: The Vikings in Western Christendom, London, 1891. 

George Henderson: The Norse Influence on Celtic Scotland, Glasgow, 1910. 

Eleanor Hull : Irish Episodes of Icelandic History, Saga Book of the Viking 
Club, Vol. Ill, 1908. 

Alice Stopford Green: Irish Nationality, Chap. IV, New York, 1911. 

Eoin MacNeill: Phases of Irish History, Chap. IX, Dublin, 1919. 

Alexander Bugge: Contributions to the History of the Norsemen in Ireland, 
Christiania, 1900. 

Charles Haliday: The Scandinavian Kingdom of Dublin, Dublin, 1884. 

James H. Todd: Edit., The War of the Gacdhil and the Gaill, or the In- 
vasions of Ireland by the Danes and other Norsemen, London, Rolls 
Series, 1867. 

The New Ireland Review, Vols. XXI II, XXIV, XXXIII. 

The Ivernian Journal, Vol. IV, pp. 73-87. 



CHAPTER XXXI 



HOSPITALITY IN ANCIENT IRELAND 

A CHARACTERISTIC of the Irish race for which it has been noted 
through the ages is its hospitality. In pre-Christian days this qual- 
ity shone as much as it did in later time. But in later time the 
virtue was given a sublimely Christian turn. "Christ is in the 
person of every guest," and "every stranger Is Christ," were the 
sentiments that came to consecrate hospitality. The attitude of 
the Irish people on the subject is well expressed in one of their 
ancient poems (translated by Kuno Meyer) ; 

Oh King of stars! 

Whether my house be dark or bright, 
Never shall it be closed against any one^ 
Lest Christ close His house against me. 

If there be a guest in your house 

And you conceal aught from him, 

'Tis not the guest that will be without it, 

But Jesus, Mary's Son. 

As with the Arab, so with the Irish, any one who had partaken 
of food in one's house, was thereby sacred against harm or hurt 
from all members of the family. A person of rank had to enter- 
tain any stranger without enquiring who or what he was or the 
wherefore of his coming. Against the coming of unknown guests 
his door must be open,^ and his fire must always have on it the 
coire ainsec, undry cauldron. 

A guest came when he liked, stayed while he would, and left 

1 When, in comparatively recent days, the Connaught princess Grainne O'Malley 
was returning from the state visit which she paid Elizabeth of England, she landed 
at Howth, and finding Lord Howth's castle-gate closed — as the family and house- 
hold were at dinner — she, incensed by such Saxon churlishness picked up from a 
nurse outside the gates and carried off with her to Connaught Lord Howth's child. 
The Howth family had to pay a goodly ransom for their child — and thereby taught 
a proper lesson in Irish hospitality. Ever after, when they went to dinner their 
gates and doors were thrown wide open. 

287 



288 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

when he wished. No matter how many the guests that thronged 
one's house, or how lengthy their sojourn, under no conceivable 
circumstances could it be intimated to them that they should de- 
part. And, furthermore, under no circumstances, in those times, 
could or would a guest, departing from any house howsoever poor, 
so far forget the respect due his host, as to offer any kind of com- 
pensation. There is a Munster story of a rude, wild mountaineer, 
who visited England, four or five centuries ago, and who, among 
the many wonderful tales of Saxonland which, on his return, he 
had to tell, had none more extraordinary, more unbelievable, than 
that the English people actually charged for the food, liquor, and 
bed, which they provided for a stranger ! 

The Irishman, who, on the arrival of travellers, discovered 
that he had not food and drink in the house with which instantly 
to regale them, suffered keen disgrace. This applied to all ranks, 
including royalty itself. If the disgrace was incurred, not through 
wilful negligence on the part of the host, but by the defection of 
one who had contracted to supply him with provisions, the latter 
was, then, rendered liable by law to pay to the disgraced one a 
blush fine, enech-ruice. 

In the old Irish poets and writers we find a man reckoned 
wealthy not by what he has but by what he gives. And the right 
hand of the generous man was often said to have grown longer 
than his left. 

It will be remembered that in the time of the Tuatha De Da- 
nann, their king, Breas, was deposed because he lacked the first 
essential, hospitality: "Breas did not grease their knives. In 
vain they came to visit Breas. Their breath did not smell of ale 
at the banquet." 

In the early days, because in many districts people might be 
too poor, or travellers too many, for satisfactory private hospital- 
ity, there were, at various points throughout the land, public houses 
of hospitality called bruldeans (breens). And the honoured offi- 
cials who were entrusted with these houses were called brughaids 
(brewys). A bruldean was always set at the junction of several 
roads, frequently the junction of six. It had open doors facing 

A century or so ago the MacSweeneys of Cork had a stone erected on the 
highway near their home to notify all travellers that they were expected to call at 
the MacSweeney home for entertainnient. 

In the last century the famous Dick Martin of Connemara (who, by the way, 
■was the first man to promote a law against cruelty to animals) used to have a 
servant awaiting the coming of the long-car to the village some miles off (which 
was the end of the public conveyance route) whose duty it was to extend the 
hospitality of his master's house to strangers who arrived on the car. 



HOSPITALITY IN ANCIENT IRELAND 289 

every road — and a man stationed on each road to make sure that 
no one passed unentertained. It had a light burning on the lawn 
all night. A full cauldron was always boiling on the fire. It was 
stocked with provisions of all kinds in plenty. 

The esteem in which was held the virtue of hospitality is ex- 
emplified by the fact that the public brughaid was, by law, per- 
mitted the same number of attendants, and given the same pro- 
tection, as the king of a territory. His hospice was endowed with 
land, and with other allowances. The brughaid had a magistrate's 
jurisdiction for arbitration of agrarian cases. His house, too, was 
the house of assembly for election of officers of the territory. 

As the brughaid was required to welcome, at all times, every 
company and every face, his bruidean must always be stocked with 
three boiled fleshes, three red fleshes (i. e., uncooked) and three 
living fleshes. The three fleshes were those of an ox, a wether, 
and a hog. The three living fleshes must be at hand, fattened, 
and ready for immediate killing; the three red fleshes dressing in 
the kitchen; the three boiled fleshes in the boilers, ready for in- 
stant serving. 

Every brughaid was required to have at least a hundred of 
each kind of animal grazing on his fields — and a hundred servants 
in his house. He was called a brughaid ceadach, meaning a hun- 
dred brughaid. There was a brughaid leitech, two hundred bru- 
ghaid, who had two hundred of each kind of cattle, and a hundred 
beds for guests. The good brughaid was expected to have in his 
house the three miachs (sacks) — a miach of malt to make refresh- 
ment for wayfarers, a miach of wheat to give them food, and a 
miach of salt, to improve the food's taste. Also the three cheers, 
the cheer of the strainers straining ale, the cheer of the servitors 
over the cauldron, and the cheer of the young men over the chess- 
board, winning games from one another. 

The six chief bruideans of Ireland were asylums of refuge for 
homicides — like the six Jewish cities of refuge. Keating estimated 
the total number of such houses of hospitality in Ireland, as being 
over four hundred. He says there were ninety in Connaught, 
ninety in Ulster, ninety-three in Leinster, and a hundred and thirty 
in Munster. 

The Small Primer (Brehon Laws) says: 

"He is no brughaid who is not possessed of hundreds. He warns 
off no individual of whatever shape. He refuses not any company. 
He keeps no account against a person, though often he come. Such 
is the brughaid who has dire with the king of a territory." 



290 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

The Irish monks and missionaries on the Continent carried 
with them to Europe the Irish idea of the House of HospitaHty — 
and estabhshed regular lines of these in France, and through Ger- 
many, for entertaining the crowds of pilgrims who journeyed to 
Rome on the one hand, and to Jerusalem on the other" including, 
of course, the crusaders. 

The same idea of providing for those who needed it material- 
ised in other directions — as in the case of the very old and de- 
pendent. In each territory was an officer called uaithne (signify- 
ing pillar), whose duty it was to provide for such as had not any 
of their own kin to do so. The law provided the uaithne with 
power to levy a rate for the maintenance of these dependent ones. 
He was called uaithne because the law tract describes him as "a 
pillar of endurance and attendance." 

If the dependent did have kin but did not choose to live as 
one of them, the uaithne was to see that a house was provided for 
him that must be at least seventeen feet long, have two doors, a 
chest at one side, a bed at the other, and a kitchen or storehouse. 
Also that he was supplied with a prescribed amount of food, of 
milk, and of attendance. His head was to be washed every Satur- 
day, and his body every twentieth night. There is displayed a 
true knowledge of human nature, and a praiseworthy indulgence 
of the crankiness and abusiveness of the old and dependent, in the 
wise provision of this law which rules that, contrary to universal 
custom, the uaithne can suffer the reddening of his face without 
disgrace to himself or to his kin. 

The stories told of a certain seventh century king of Con- 
naught, Guaire the Hospitable, illustrate the very high regard in 
which hospitality and generosity were held. Once, being beaten 
in battle by one of the kings Diarmuid, Guaire, in token of sub- 
mission, had to kneel in front of Diarmuid and take in his teeth 
the point of the victor's sword. When he was in this humiliating 
position, Diarmuid, to test whether his famed generosity was sin- 
cere or ostentatious, had, first, one of his Druids ask of Guaire a 
gift in honour of learning — to which request the humiliated Guaire 
paid no heed: and then a leper ask an alms for God's sake, to 
whom Guaire, with teeth still closed upon the sword point, gave 
the gold brooch from his mantle. At the secret instigation of the 
king, one of his people forced the brooch from the leper, who at 

2 Throughout early Irish history and story, the several references to pilgrims 
to Jerusalem are made so casually as to suggest the confident inference that great 
numbers were constantly going. The pilgrimage to Rome seems to have been very 
common. 



HOSPITALITY IN ANCIENT IRELAND 291 

once complained of his loss to the kneeling one. Guaire imme- 
diately unlinked the golden girdle that bound his waist, and reached 
it to the leper. This gift was instantly also taken from the poor 
man, when, with sore complaint the leper came a third time to 
Guaire. Realising the poor man's distress, and knowing that he 
had nothing more to give, Guaire's tears ran from his eyes in a 
stream. 

"Arise, Guaire," said Diarmuid, "and do homage only to 
God!" 

Diarmuid then brought his late foe with him to the great fair 
of Taillte. As was usual with him, Guaire brought to the gather- 
ing a sack of silver to make presents to the men of Ireland. Diar- 
muid, however, had secretly ordered that none should ask or ac- 
cept a gift from his royal guest. When he had been two days at 
the fair, he sent for a bishop to give him the last rites of the 
church. Diarmuid and his friends, alarmed, asked why he sought 
the last rites. "Because," answered Guaire, "I have seen the men 
of Ireland for two days assembled together in one spot, without 
any of them asking me for a bounty. Surely it is the end." 

Then Diarmuid lifted the ban, and Guaire was happy once 
more. In the presence of the men of Ireland, the peace was rati- 
fied between the two kings, who kept it ever after. 

If Guaire was generous, his enemy, Diarmuid, was considerate. 
For when the latter, marching to give battle, was met by a mes- 
senger with the request that as Guaire was not yet fully prepared 
to give him battle, he should not cross the river for another twen- 
ty-four hours — "I gladly grant his request," said Diarmuid, "and 
would have granted him a much greater, had he asked it."^ 

^ The ancient historical and poetic accounts are full of instances of this kind 
of battle chivalry — showing that usually a leader considered it disgraceful to attack 
an unprepared foe. 

It will be recalled that Gol MacMorna could not be induced to surprise an 
enemy by attacking before daybreak. 

We have a fine sample of this chivalry in the Agallam na Seanorach. When 
Caoilte, with the lute player and the man of beauty, was visiting Bo-bind of the 
Tuatha de Danann at Assaroe, to get cured of a spear-thrust in the calf of his 
leg, on a night of revelry there, the alarm was raised that a fleet of marauding 
foreigners (Fomorians) had sailed into the harbour. Caoilte was appealed to 
for his advice in the face of impending disaster, and answered: Let them be 
asked for a truce till the Tuatha de Danann make a gathering and a muster. "And 
thus it was done," adds the poet narrator, with naive simplicity. 

The most notable historical instance of this kind of chivalry occurred in the 
year 1001 or 1002 when Brian Boru demanded from the then Ard Righ, Malachi, 
submission and hostages — "The latter replied to Brian's ambassadors," says Keat- 
ing, "by saying that if Brian would grant him a respite of one month in order 
that he might have time to summon around him the army of Leth-Cuin, he would, 
at the end of the period, either give battle or send hostages to the king of Leth- 
Mogha." But when Aod O'Neill, king of Ailech, refused to support him, Malachi, 
at the end of the month journeyed to Brian, and told him frankly that he was not 



292 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Furthermore, Guaire's messenger, having thoroughly viewed 
Diarmuid's army, disparaged it to the king for the smallness of 
their numbers and the poorness of their appearance — to which 
Diarmuid answered: "Knowest thou not that neither by num- 
bers nor by brave apparel is a battle won, but by the will of God, 
and a truthful cause. And though thou sayest our host is mean to 
look upon it is not fair forms but hardy hearts that win a fight."* 

Joyce, P. W. : Social Historj^ of Ancient Ireland. 
O'Curry, Eugene: Manuscript Materials of Irish History. 

Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish. 

Hyde, Douglas, LL.D. : A Literary Histor>' of Ireland, from the earliest 

times to the present daj'. 
Keating's History of Ireland. 

able to get the backing he wished, and consequently regretted he would have to 
give hostages and submit. Brian, however, instead of at once accepting, entreated 
Malachi to take a respite of one year to see if in that time he might not do better. 
In the meantime he himself would ask the submission of Aod O'Neill — and also 
of the King of Ulidia — "that I may learn what kind of answer they make to me; 
and then, should they give me battle, thou mayest help them against me if thou 
wilt." But Malachi refused, declaring that he would not fight against him after 
any such manner. 

Let us imagine, if we can, some of our noble kings and generals in this twen- 
tieth century civilisation emulating in chivalry the old Irish "barbarians." 

* While considering signal virtues of men in those days, it is not inappropriate 
to set down here a sample of the chiv-alry and the great boldness of another king 
of Connaught, Ailill. Ailill was a wanton and a sinful king, who often and reck- 
lessly warred upon his enemies. But there came at length a battle in which he 
was overwhelmingly defeated. As he fled afar from the bloody field, he called 
upon his charioteer: 

"Look behind and see whether the slaying is great, and are the slayers near us." 

The charioteer looked behind him, and what he said was : "The slaying with 
which your people are slain is unendurable." 

"Not then their own guilt falls on them, but the guilt of my pride and un- 
truthfulness," said the king. "Turn thou the chariot toward the enemy, for my 
slaying will be the saving of a multitude." 

And he faced the pursuers and gave his life to stay the slaughter. And King 
Ailill, a monster of wickedness living, in dying won the peace of God. 



CHAPTER XXXII 



THE TRIBE 



There were nearly two hundred tuaths or territories, in Ireland, 
each occupied by a tribe, under its chief who was oftentimes desig- 
nated king of a tuath. 

The subdivisions of a tuath were ballybetaighs of which there 
were usually thirty to each tuath. The ballybetaigh was again 
subdivided into twelve seasreachs, each of one ploughland or about 
one hundred and twenty acres. The ballybetaigh was supposed 
to be of extent to supply grazing for four herds of seventy-five 
cows each, "without one cow touching another." 

In general, the whole of the lands of the territory belonged 
to all the tribe. But there was a limited circle, including the king, 
the nobles, and a few of the leading professional men, each of 
whom had private rights in a certain portion of the land — the 
right to use those lands for the benefit of himself and family, but 
not to transfer them to any person outside the tribe. 

The foregoing refers only to special portions of the tribal land. 
The greater part of the tribal land was free for the use of all the 
people of the tribe. 

These privileged ones who had exclusive rights to the use of 
certain lands, usually rented large portion in parcels to the ceiles 
(tenants) — who formed the feme, or general body of the people. 

The privileged person usually also rented to the ceile cattle 
for stocking the land. The ceile who owned his own stock, or who 
had to borrow but little, was of much higher standing than the 
ceile who had to borrow or rent all his stock. The former wasc 
called a free ceile, and the latter an unfree because he was bound 
to those above him by so many obligations. 

The stock borrowed from a noble (or from a certain class 
between the noble and the ceile called ho-avre, who had stock to 
rent) was returned, it or its equivalent, at the end of seven years. 

Below the ceiles — the feine, or general body of the people of 
the tribe — were two classes usually rat.ed as non-free. One of 

293 



294 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

them was the bothach and sencleithe, who were labourers, horse- 
boys, herdsmen, and hangers-on, supported by particular families 
to which they were attached, and who were considered members 
of the tribe, but had neither property rights nor any voice in the 
tribal council. The other, the fuidir, were strangers, fugitives, 
war captives, condemned criminals or people who had to give up 
their freedom in order to work out a debt or fine that they could 
not pay. These latter, were not of the tribe, only belonged to it, 
and were serfs, pure and simple. Only, they had the right of 
renting a little land and gradually acquiring property — till, in the 
course of a certain number of years, having accumulated some 
substance, and having proved to the tribe that they were people 
of character, they could, by the general voice of the tribe, be re- 
ceived into the fold, and become of the feine. Of course the 
bothach and sencleithe were privileged to raise themselves even 
more easily than the fuidir. The very humblest might, by inherent 
worth, work his way up to be eventually among the noblest. So, 
the class system in Ireland was not a caste system. 

It was only the fuidir, the mere flotsam and jetsam of the na- 
tion, who were in the state of semi-servitude. The feudal system, 
the system of the lord and the serf, which was the rule through- 
out almost all the countries of Europe then, wa.s never known in 
Ireland — at least not until the English, after they had established 
footing there, endeavoured to introduce from their own country 
a form of it. The system in Ireland was something more like the 
patriarchal system of the east. The tribe resolved itself into fam- 
ily groups called derb-fine ^ centring around one leading family 
from whom the chief was always chosen. 

The law of inheritance in ancient Ireland was not that of 
primogeniture, but of gavel-kind — that is, instead of the eldest son 
inheriting all the father's property, it was divided, cattle and land, 
among all the sons. But the eldest son got, with his share, the 
house and offices and household effects. Special responsibilities 
fell to him as guardian of his sisters, and of his brothers under 
age, and as the representative of the family in all cases of stress 
or need. 

The laws protected every one, including the base fuidir. They 
were especially framed to protect the weak against the strong. 
"No person," says the law, "shall be oppressed in his difficulty." 
And the law forbade the rent-payer to give service or rent to one 

1 Four generations sprung from one man usually went to each derb-fine — so 
that in each succeeding generation the groups had to be re-arranged. 



THE TRIBE 295 

who would exact unjustly. The greedy oppressor had to repent 
and pay a fine before his ceile should resume giving him either 
rent or service. 

The ceile contributed to the head of the tribe a certain amount 
of labour, a portion of the household needs, and a certain number 
of days military service, which was demanded when the need arose. 

But the chief, or king of the territory — as well as the provin- 
cial king and the Ard-Righ — kept about him a number of paid 
permanent troops — his household troops composed of his own 
people, and a small standing army usually composed of merce- 
naries. And the strongest, most powerful man was chosen as the 
king's airechta, champion or avenger. 

The king of the tuath paid tribute to the provincial king, who 
in turn paid tribute to the Ard-Righ. And on the other hand, 
each of the higher kings paid back to his tributary a small courtesy 
tribute called tuarastal. The Book of Rights specifies in full, and 
curious detail, the cis, or amounts of the tribute in cattle, in cloaks, 
in swords, etc., due from each inferior king to his superior — and 
likewise the tuarastal from the superior to his inferior. 

The headship (whether chief or king) was hereditary only to 
the extent that the ruler was always chosen by the people, from 
within one family. From the righ-damna (king material) that is, 
the royal uncles, brothers, sons, nephews, grand-sons and grand- 
nephews, the people chose whatever male member of the fam- 
ily would make the wisest, bravest, and best ruler. In later cen- 
turies, in order to avoid the evils of disputed succession, the king's 
successor was always chosen during the king's lifetime — and this 
king-elect was called tanaiste. He had to be without physical 
blemish or deformity. When elected he had to swear to observe 
the law, and to govern in accordance with the law and the ancient 
customs. At the inauguration the ollam, in presence of the people, 
read to him the laws that he must swear to observe, and the an- 
cient customs that he must swear to maintain. And for non-ob- 
servance of these, he was liable to be, at any time, deposed. 

Same books as for preceding chapter, together with : 

Sullivan, W. K., Ph.D.: Introduction to O'Curry's Manners and Customs 
of the Ancient Irish. 



CHAPTER XXXIII 

MANNER OF LIVING IN ANCIENT IRELAND 

In very early Ireland practically all residences were of wood or 
of wicker-work, and most of them were in circular form. They 
were usually thatched with straw, rushes, or sedge. Stone was 
very seldom used in building residences before the eighth century. 
The wooden and wicker-work houses were washed with lime on 
the outside — lime in its natural white state, or coloured with pig- 
ments. The older stories and poems show that houses of the bet- 
ter kind had windows that were shuttered. These early resi- 
dences were seldom divided into apartments — though the stories 
show that compartments for sleepers were often made along the 
walls of a large building. 

Linen sheets and ornamented coverlets were in use. Small 
low tables for serving meals were supplied with knives (no forks), 
with cups, jugs, drinking horns, methers, sometimes with goblets 
of glass (a precious rarity, however), goblets of silver, flagons 
of bronze or copper — and occasionally napkins. Cooks wore flat 
white caps and linen aprons. Wheat meal, oat-meal, eggs, meat, 
milk and honey, with some vegetables and a very few fruits, sup- 
plied the table. Light was furnished by candles of tallow or of 
beeswax, rushlights, spails of bog fir, and sometimes oil lamps. 
The lights were stuck on the walls, stood on the tables, were held 
by attendants, or hung from above. 

The residence of one of the higher ranks was either on a lios 
(a raised mound of earth), or a rath (a lios protected by a sur- 
rounding wall, usually of earth), or, in case of a chief or king, a 
dun, which was a fortified rath having a couple of surrounding 
walls with a water-filled ditch between. 

All of the better class houses had basins for bathing. And 
the select few had scented oils and fragrant herbs, as accompani- 
ments of the bath. After their day's exertion, and before taking 
their evening meal, hunters and warriors treated themselves to a 

296 



MANNER OF LIVING IN ANCIENT IRELAND 297 

bath. And a bath was always a common courtesy to which to 
treat a newly arrived guest. 

The women had mirrors made of highly polished metal. They 
used cosmetics, and had combs which were often beautifully 
wrought, and embossed cior-bolgs (comb bags) in which they car- 
ried comb, veil, and personal ornaments. Both sexes devoted the 
greatest attention to the care of their hair, which was often elabo- 
rately curled, and often also plaited in several long plaits the 
ends of which were fastened by little golden balls — one or two 
large ones on the heads of the men, and six or seven small ones on 
women's heads. Both women and men (of noble rank) wore beau- 
tifully wrought brooches, for fastening their mantle, and beauti- 
fully wrought girdles, also. Other ornaments were bracelets, 
rings, neck torques, diadems, crescents, of gold and silver — beau- 
tiful specimens of all which may be seen in the National Museum 
in Dublin and in the British Museum. Veils and gloves were in 
use — and sandals likewise. 

The chief articles of dress were, in the case of the women, one 
long robe that reached to the ankles, and of the men a short jacket 
combined with a sort of kilt. Over these both sexes frequently 
wore a cloak or mantle. The substance of the dress was usually 
either of linen or wool. But sometimes it was of silk or satin, 
imported. 

The cloak or mantle was a distinctive and prized article of 
dress, the one to which most thought was given, and on which 
most value was expended. In details of gifts and tributes told of 
in the old stories, and in accounts of beautiful cavalcades, the 
mantle gets prominent place. For instance, the Book of Rights 
detailing the tuarastal payable from the king to subordinate kings 
says: 

"Seven mantles with wreaths of gold, 
And seven cups for social drinking, 
Seven steeds not accustomed to falter, 
To the king of Kerry of the combats. 

"The prosperous king of Rathlenn is entitled 
To the stipend of a brave great man ; 
Ten swords, and ten drinking horns, 
Ten red cloaks, ten blue cloaks. 

"The king of Ara of beauty is entitled 

From the king of Eire of the comely face, 
To six swords, six praised shields, 
And six mantles of deep crimson." 



298 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

In the poem of tke Bruidean da Derga, the Saxon chief Ing- 
cel, in describing King Conaire Mor as he saw him in the Bruidean, 
gives a glorified description of a king's dress in the early days: 

"I saw his many-hued red cloak of lustrous silk, 

With its gorgeous ornamentation of precious gold bespangled 

upon its surface, 
With its flowing capes dexterously embroidered. 

"I saw in it a great large brooch. 

The long pin was of pure gold ; 

Bright shining like a full-moon 

Was its ring, all around — a crimson gemmed circlet 

Of round sparkling pebbles — 

Filling the fine front of his noble breast 

Atwixt his well proportioned fair shoulders. 

"I saw his splendid linen kilt, 

With its striped silken borders, — 
A face-reflecting mirror of various hues. 
The coveted of the eyes of irciny, — 
Embracing his noble neck — enriching its beauty. 
An embroidery of gold upon the lustrous silk — 
(Extended) from his bosom to his noble knees." 

The law prescribed that sons of kings in fosterage were co 
have satin mantles, of scarlet, purple, or blue; scabbards for their 
little swords, ornamented with silver. Sons of the higher kings 
were to have their mantles fastened with a brooch ornamented 
with gold. A son of a king of a tuath, a brooch ornamented with 
silver. 

Mantles and capes were sometimes trimmed with furs of na- 
tive animals, seals, badgers, otters and foxes. 

In welcoming a guest the usual courtesy was for the house- 
hold to arise to their feet. Sometimes also the host greeted him 
with a kiss on each cheek. At larger assemblies, as for instance 
at the king's court, the visitor was sometimes received "with clap- 
ping of hands." The custom of the hand-shake was not used or 
known. 

The guest was feasted with the best that could be had, and 
he was entertained with story and with poem, with music of the 
harp, the pipe, or the tympan. Chess was the game always pro- 
vided — the great and universal game, in wlwch the Irish were 
highly skilled. 

Another entertainment, which however was peculiar to Courts, 



MANNER OF LIVING IN ANCIENT IRELAND 299 

was that provided by professional jesters and jugglers, buffoons 
and druiths. The same Ingcel whom we just quoted describes 
Conari Mor's three court jesters: 

"I saw there," said he, "three jesters at the fire. They wore 
three dark grey cloaks; and if all the men of Eirinn were in one 
place, and though the body of the father or the mother of each man 
was lying dead before him, not one could refrain from laughing at 
them." 

And of Tultlnne, the king's juggler, Ingcel says: 

"He had ear-clasps of gold in his ears; and a speckled white cloak 
upon him. He had nine swords in his hand, and nine silvery shields, 
and nine balls of gold. He throws every one of them up (into the 
air), and none of them falls to the ground, and there is but one of 
them at a time upon his palm; and like the buzzing of bees on a 
beautiful day, was the motion of each passing the other." 

The druith is often interpreted to be a buffoon- — but he must 
have been of an entirely different and indeed far superior order, 
when we recall the druith Ua Maighlinne (who belonged to the 
court, at Ailech, of Fergal the son of Maelduin, in the begin- 
ning of the eighth century). On the eve of the great battle of 
Almain (Allen) he entertained the northern warriors by narrating 
the battles and triumphs of these northmen, and also of their 
enemies the Leinstermen, from the earliest time down to the time 
that was then present. And this Ua Maighlinne, taken prisoner 
in the battle and about to be beheaded, was asked to give the Geim 
Druath^ or druith's cry, before he died. And so loud, beautiful, 
and melodious was this peculiar cry that for three days and three 
nights after his death the enchanting soft echoes of it were still 
reverberating about the spot. 

The description given of that other wonderful and versatile 
entertainer, Donnbo, who went on the same expedition, and lost 
his hfe in the same battle, may well describe the druith. And, 
because of its dramatic beauty, we shall make room for it here : 

"And there was not in all Eirinn one more comely, or of better 
shape or face, or more graceful synimetr5% than he; he was the best 
at singing amusing verses and telling of royal stories in the world ; 
he was the best to equip horses, and to mount spears, and to plait 
hair; and his was the best mind in acuteness of intellect and in 
honour." 



300 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

So famed and so popular was the clever and witty Donnbo 
that when Fergal summoned the men of Leth Cuinn to go with 
him upon this expedition, what each of them answered was: "If 
Donnbo go upon the expedition, I will." 

And on the night that was the eve of the battle, on the hill of 
Allen, when Ua Maighlinne told them the stories, it was Donnbo 
who had been asked to amuse them, but had refused because his 
heart was weighted with sad prescience of the morrow's disaster. 
But he promised that if Ua Maighlinne amused them to-night he 
would make amusement for his royal master, wheresoever he 
should be, on the next night. On the next night his royal master 
and thousands of his devoted ones, not only warriors, but pipers 
and trumpeters, and harpers, were dead upon the field of carnage. 
And Donnbo, like his royal master, had had his head severed from 
his body. A warrior of Murchad, the victorious King of Leinster, 
who, on a dare from his king came alone to the battlefield at dead 
of night to bear from it a trophy, heard a voice in the air above 
the battlefield, calling upon Donnbo, in the name of the King of 
the Seven Heavens to make amusement to-night, as he had prom- 
ised, for Fergal the son of Maelduin. And in answer the warrior 
first heard the dead singers and trumpeters and harpers make 
music the like of which he never heard before or after. JVnd 
next, from a cluster of rushes, he heard the head of Donnbo raise 
the dord-fiansa, the sweetest of all the world's music: for Donnbo 
was keeping his promise to amuse the king. The warrior wished 
to take back the head of Donnbo to amuse the Leinster king, but 
Donnbo's head said : "I prefer that nothing whatever should 
carry me away unless Christ, the son of God, should take me. 
And thou must give the guarantee of Christ that thou wilt bring 
me back to my body again." The warrior, giving the guarantee, 
carried to his king's camp the head of Donnbo. 

"Pity thy fate, O Donnbo," said Murchad and his company, 
"comely was thy face. Make amusement for us, this night, the same 
as thou didst for thy lord, yesterday." That it should be the darker 
for him Donnbo turned his face to the wall, and raised the dord- 
fiansa on high. "And it was the sweetest of all music ever heard 
on all the surface of the earth! So that the host were all crying 
and lamenting with the plaintiveness and softness of the melody." 

Same books as for preceding chapter, together with: 
Carbery, Ethna: In the Celtic Past, 



CHAPTER XXXIV 

STRUCTURAL ANTIQUITIES 

The structural antiquities which we can still observe in Ireland 
arrange themselves under five heads : cromlechs, tumuli, the great 
duns of the west, ancient churches, and round towers. 

The cromlechs, sometimes called dolmen, are each composed 
of three great standing stones, ten or twelve feet high with a great 
flat slab resting on top of them, and always inclined toward the 
east. Sometimes these are surrounded by a wide circle of stand- 
ing stones. The cromlechs are of such very remote antiquity — 
ancient, at the beginning of the Christian era — that all legends 
of them are lost. The invariable inclination to the east of the 
covering slab suggests altars dedicated to sun-worship. The name 
cromlech may mean either bent slab or the slab of the god Crom. 
And this latter derivation suggests to some that they were sacri- 
ficial altars used in the very ancient worship of that god. 

But some of the best authorities have concluded that they were 
tombstones — because beneath every one of them under which ex- 
cavations were made, were found the bones, or the urns and dust, 
of the dead. From this, however, we cannot necessarily conclude 
that they were erected as tombstones — any more than we should 
conclude that the various Christian temples and altars under which 
honoured ones have been interred were only intended as monu- 
ments to the dead beneath them. 

Excavations made beneath many cromlechs have turned up, 
besides urns and bones of the dead, tools of flint and stone, axes, 
hammers, chisels, spear-heads, knives, and also rings of shale and 
jet — thus showing that the cromlechs were erected in the far-away 
Stone Age. And, as Miss Margaret Stokes points out, an ad- 
vanced religious condition for such age is ev^idenced by the fact 
that they then celebrated funeral rights in tombs of imposing 
grandeur, with cremation, and sometimes urn burial. 

The tumuli or enormous burial mounds found in the Boyne 
section of eastern Ireland show the race in a much more advanced 
stage of civilisation. These tumuli, as proved by the decorative 

301 



302 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

designs carved upon their walls, were erected at least before the 
Christian era — and maybe many centuries before it. They are 
great stone roofed royal sepulchres, buried under vast regularly 
shaped, artificial mounds. Every one of the tumuli so far explored 
has shown urn burial. These urns of the tumuli are a marked 
advance upon those of the cromlechs. Some of them are beauti- 
fully formed, and delicately ornamented. Many urns may be 
found in the same tumulus. Sometimes they are set with one 
large one in the centre and other small ones circling around it. 
The walls of the sepulchral chamber, in the interior of these 
mounds, are oftentimes decorated with carvings, made with chisel 
or punch, and scraper. The patterns are the circle, semi-circle, 
half-moon, concentric circle, spiral, zig-zag, stars, and leaves. 
The double divergent spiral or trumpet pattern, which was intro- 
duced into Celtic ornament just prior to the Christian era, has 
not yet appeared in the tumuli. 

The greatest, most beautiful, of these wonderful royal tombs 
are those at Knowth, Dowth, and New Grange, on the Boyne. 

After the tumuli, the next structures in order of time are the 
great duns of the west coast, such as Dun Angus, and Dun Conor, 
on the Aran islands in Galway Bay. The great duns were erected 
sometime during the first three centuries of the Christian era. 
They consist of enormously thick walls, of stone, which, though 
built before the discovery of any kind of cement, are of marvel- 
lously fine, firm, and impregnable construction. These great walls, 
in the interior of which are sometimes chambers and passages, 
surround an amphitheatre of about a thousand feet in diameter. 
In the amphitheatre are stone huts, the residences of the dun — 
some of them of bee-hive shape, some of them of the shape of an 
upturned boat. Tradition says that these great duns were erected 
by the Firbolgs who maintained themselves along the western 
fringe for long centuries after the Milesians possessed themselves 
of the land. Moreover, in the second century of the Christian 
era a new colony of Firbolgs is said to have arrived in Aran; a 
tribe led by Angus, who, in that century, coming from the western 
islands of Scotland (to which they had been driven long centuries 
before) first settled in Meath, but, fleeing from an exacting king 
there, went westward, and finally settled in Aran and on adjoining 
portions of the mainland. 

About the round towers, their origin and use, a more bitter 
controversy has waged than about any other ancient Irish remains. 
It had been the opinion of many, sustained by the researches of 



STRUCTURAL ANTIQUITIES 303 

some noted antiquarians, that the round towers were of oriental 
origin, that they were temples of the sun-worship of ancient Ire- 
land, and that they were erected long before the introduction of 
Christianity. But the antiquarians now are pretty generally agreed 
that they are of Christian origin always built as adjuncts to 
churches, and erected after the marauding Danes had shown the 
harassed ecclesiastics the need of some immediate, strong, and 
easily defended, place of refuge for themselves, and of safety for 
the sacred objects, and the rich objects of church art which the 
Northmen constantly sought. The round towers of Ireland range 
in height from about a hundred to a hundred and twenty feet; they 
are from twelve to twenty feet in external diameter at the base, 
and a little narrower at the top. They are of six or seven storeys 
high; with one window usually to each story — except in the upper- 
most story which has four. The lowermost of these openings is 
always about ten feet or more from the ground — giving good ad.- 
vantage over attackers. The walls are usually three and a half 
to four feet thick. 

There are still eighty round towers in Ireland, twenty of them 
perfect. They are always found in connection with churches — 
and almost invariably situated about twenty feet from the north- 
west corner of the church — and with the door or lowermost win- 
dow facing the church entrance. 

The antiquarians to-day conclude that round towers began to 
be erected at the end of the ninth and beginning of the tenth cen- 
tury — in the period of peace that followed the death of the Dan- 
ish king Turgesius, and the temporary loss of the Danish grip 
upon Ireland. The first reference in the annals to a round tower 
is in the year 950. It is upon the inference to be derived from 
this fact, taken in connection with the activities of the Danes — 
and that to be derived from the relation of the round towers to 
the churches — that is built the now accepted theory of the Danish- 
time origin of the round towers, as places of ecclesiastical refuge. 

Almost all of the earliest Irish churches were of wood. The 
Venerable Bede talks of the Irishman, St. Finan, erecting on the 
English island of Lindisfarne, "a church entirely of wood, after 
the manner of the Scots." Rarely indeed in the first few centuries 
of Christianity in Ireland was any such building erected of stone — 
the exceptions being the cases of small oratories or chapels, which, 
like the oratory of Gallerus (in Kerry) were built of uncemented 
stone with side walls gradually converging till they were joined by 
a single stone at the top. It is in the seventh and eighth centuries 



304 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

that the use of mortar and of dressed or partly dressed stone 
shows in the erection of the occasional small chapels for which 
stone was yet used. 

It was practically in the tenth century that the use of stone for 
building the large churches began. And it was only in the eleventh 
and twelfth centuries that it became general. In these last-named 
centuries the Romanesque style was introduced, and some beauti- 
ful churches erected, like that of St. Caimin at Inniscaltra by Brian 
Boru, and Cormac's chapel at Cashel. 

In the Life of St. Malachy, written by his friend, the conti- 
nental St. Bernard, we incidentally learn how rare, in some parts 
of the island, were stone churches even then, in the twelfth cen- 
tury. After Malachy had taken charge of Bangor — the old foun- 
dation of St. Comgall — he first built a chapel "made indeed of 
planed timber," says St. Bernard, "but well-jointed and compactly 
put together, and for a Scottish work elegant enough." And later, 
more ambitious, he astounded the territory by starting to build 
a stone church. The ubiquitous pessimist was there to help Ma- 
lachy along. St. Bernard describes the rude country-fellow turn- 
ing up to laugh to scorn the idea of building a church of stone! 
"What has come over you," says the fellow, "to undertake such 
a novelty in this country? We are Scots, not Gauls. How are 
you, a poor man, to finish it? Who will live to see it perfected?" 
And so on, in the usual strain of the helpful hurler on the fence. 

The handsome stone churches which began to be erected in 
the early eleventh century — as soon as the country had been freed 
from the scourging Danes — and which engrafted the Roman 
arched style upon the Irish horizontal form, with the primitive 
Irish inclined jambs, was well established when the Anglo-Nor- 
mans invaded the country in the late twelfth century. And from 
that time forward, for some centuries (till the Reformation be- 
gan to make itself felt in Ireland) the Anglo-Norman barons and 
the Irish chieftains vied with each other in the erection of many 
magnificent churches and abbeys, the ruins of which are impres- 
sive. 

In the decorating of doorways and windows^ sculpture began 
to show in the churches of the tenth century. But Irish sculpture 
is best exemplified probably on the high crosses of the tenth, 
eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries. There are some forty- 
five of these high crosses still remaining, most of them very beau- 
tiful. There was an Irish cross, now called the Celtic cross, de- 
veloped about the tenth century, a compromise between the Latin 
cross and the Greek cross, having the circle of the Greek cross 



STRUCTURAL ANTIQUITIES 305 

placed upon the shafts of the Latin. The sculpture on the high 
crosses included carvings of the saints, scriptural scenes, judgment 
scenes, royal processions, hunting scenes, stags at bay, horsemen, 
chariots, etc. 

The sculpture of the Irish at this period was infinitely superior 
to that produced by their neighbours, the Welsh, the Anglo-Saxons, 
and the Scottish. With these sculpture was a mere harsh, me- 
chanical imitation. But the soul of the artist breathed through 
the work of the Irish sculptor. Miss Margaret Stokes well de- 
fines the difference : 

"So total a dissimilarity of spirit and feeling for Art exists in the 
works of these different countries, that it becomes impossible to con- 
ceive their productions as belonging to the same school. It would 
be difficult to find two works of Art more different in character than 
the simple form of the Cross of Ualla in Clonmacnois, and the bar- 
barous extravagance of the Scotch slab at Halkirk in Caithness. 
Something more than arehasology is required to perceive this, and 
to perceive the qualities which form the essential elements of the 
individuality of Irish Art. It is not in the quantity, it is not even 
in the nature of ornamental detail, that true merit lies; it is in its 
use, and in that indefinable qualit}' which, for want of better word, 
we term feeling. It is unreasonable to call sculpture, however perfect, 
which is merely encrusted on any object, ornament. Decoration is 
beautiful only when found in its right place, when adding to the 
effect of the fundamental form to be adorned; and when held in 
subordination and subjection to the primary idea, a noble reserve of 
power is felt to exist, which comes forth at the right time, and in 
the right place, to aid in the expression of the essential elements of 
the subject, emphasising its important points, and adding clearness 
to the beauty of its outline. 

"It is in such qualities that the Manx, Welsh, and some of the 
Scottish stones are so deficient, as compared with the work upon the 
sepulchral slabs of Clonmacnois, and Durrow, and other Christian 
cemeteries in Ireland ; and the conclusion our experience would point 
to is that such Art out of Ireland belongs to much the same date as 
that seen in this country, but is in no essential element Irish, and 
merely belongs to a style which overspread the three countries in 
the ninth and tenth centuries, and which attained a more beautiful 
result in Ireland, because in the hands of a people possessed of a fine 
artistic instinct." 

Petrie, Geo., LL.D. : The Origin and Uses of the Round Towers of Ire- 
land. 

Ecclesiastical Arch, of Ireland. 

Stokes, Miss Margt. : Early Christian Art in Ireland. 



3o6 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Early Christian Architecture in Ireland. 



Joyce, P. W.: Social History of Ancient Ireland. 
O'Cu'rry, Eugene: Manuscript Materials of Irish History. 

Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish. 

Wakeman, Wm. F.: Handbook of Irish Antiquities, Pagan and Christian. 
Ware's Works. 



CHAPTER XXXV 

VARIOUS ARTS OF ANCIENT IRELAND 

Save that of the scribe, there was no other art in ancient Ire- 
land carried to such beautiful perfection as that of the metal 
worker. And we have, still remaining, hundreds of beautiful pieces 
of this work. 

Those remaining are in gold, silver, copper, bronze, findruine 
(a kind of white bronze) and brass. Of Irish gold-wrought ob- 
jects alone, there are in the National Museum of Dublin twelve 
times the weight of all the ancient gold objects from. England, 
Scotland and Wales, collected in the British Museum. 

These ancient objects are of various kinds; articles of personal 
adornment, bell-shrines, cumdachs or shrines for books, croziers, 
etc. 

Among the personal ornaments we have brooches, bracelets, 
rings, necklaces, torques (twisted ribbons of gold or silver) for 
wearing around the neck, minns or diadems, crowns, amulets, ear- 
rings, beads, balls, crescents, gorgets, the niam-lann (a flexible 
plate of burnished gold, silver, or findruine worn around the fore- 
head), et cetera — a lavish wealth of beautiful ornaments exqui- 
sitely wrought, which, after a long count of centuries, in some cases 
thirteen, fifteen and twenty, tell us the story of the rarely skilled, 
noble artificers of Ireland, whose genius in metal was not only 
unsurpassed, but even unequalled, in western Europe. Of a bronze 
ornament two thousand years old and of which there are some 
fragments in the Petrie Museum, Kemble (in Horae Ferales) 
says: "For beauty of design and execution they may challenge 
comparison with any specimen of cast bronze work that it has 
ever been my fortune to see." We have many beautiful bronzes 
of the pre-Christian period, which, in their way, rival the beauty 
of the gold and silver work of several centuries later. 

And of the very ancient gorgets wrought in gold. Dr. Joyce 
says: "They are so astonishingly fine, and show such extraordi- 
nary skill of manipulation, that it is difficult to understand how 
they could have been produced by mere handwork, by moulds, 

307 



3o8 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

hammers, and punches. Yet they must have been done in that 
way." He quotes Sir William Wilde as pronouncing of them: 

"It may safely be asserted that for both design and execution, they 
are undoubtedly the most gorgeous and m.agnificcnt specimens of gold 
work discovered in any part of the world." 

In a country in which, in faraway pre-Christian times, such 
rarely beautiful ornaments were wTOught, surely it needed little 
poetic license for the old file, when describing Maine, the son of 
Ailill and Medb, setting out to seek, the hand of the beautiful Ferb 
of Ulster, thus to picture it: 

"There were seven greyhounds attending his (Prince Maine's) 
chariot, in chains of silver, "with balls of gold upon each chain, so 
that the tingling of the balls against the chains would be music suf- 
ficient (for the march). There was no known colour that was not 
to be seen upon these greyhounds. There were seven Cornaire 
(trumpeters), with corna (horns) of gold and of silver, wearing 
clothes of many colours, and all having fair-yellow hair. Three 
druids also went in front of them, who wore minda (diadems) of 
silver upon their heads and speckled cloaks over their dresses, and 
who carried shields of bronze ornamented with red copper. Three 
Cruitire (harpers) accompanied them; each of kingly aspect, and 
arrayed in a crimson cloak. It was so they arrived on the green 
of Cruachan." 

Or for the ancient seanachie, telling us that In Tara there 
were "one hundred and fifty drinking vessels, ornamented with 
gold, silver, and carmogal" (possibly enamel). 

After studying the wonderful specimens of the ancient metal- 
work which we possess, we can well understand why it was that 
nobles and saints oftentimes devoted themselves to the profession 
of metal-working, and also why it was that the laws rank all fol- 
lowers of the profession with nobles. And, it is worth noting in 
this connection, that it was from Irish ideas, springing from Irish 
minds, and by Irish hands in Ireland, that the rare articles in gold 
and silver were rarely wrought. In corroboration of their native 
conception and origin. Dr. Joyce in his Social History of Ireland 
quotes the decision of a Continental expert, M. Solomon Reinach, 
who had studied the Irish gold ornaments in the National Mu- 
seum: "Of objects of gold, attesting imitation of Greek and 
Roman models, there is no trace." 

The objects that are of pre-Christian origin are in general 



VARIOUS ARTS OF ANCIENT IRELAND 309 

easily distinguished from those of Christian Ireland by the dif- 
ference in pattern. The ornamentation in pagan days consisted 
chiefly of the circle, spiral, lozenge, and parallels. Under the 
hand of the Christian artist there developed new patterns the most 
characteristic being the divergent spiral or trumpet pattern, knot- 
ting and interlacing. 

Of all the many beautiful articles of personal adornment that 
remain to us from those ancient times in Ireland, probably the 
most luxurious, and very frequently the most beautiful (though 
far from being the most ancient) are the delgs, or brooches — the 
size and costliness of some of which may be judged from the Dal 
Riada brooch, which, accidentally dug up in an Antrim field in the 
middle of the last century, contained two and one-third ounces of 
pure gold, was five inches long, and two and an eighth inches in 
diameter. 

But for beauty, none of them all equals the Tara brooch. This 
brooch, found by a child on the strand near Drogheda, is 'of white 
bronze. Both the face of the brooch and the back are overlaid 
with beautiful patterns, wrought in an Irish filigree or formed by 
amber, glass and enamel. These patterns of which there are no 
less than seventy-six different kinds in this single article are 
wrought in such minute perfection that a powerful lens is needed 
to perceive and appreciate the wonderful perfection of detail. All 
of the many designs are in perfect harmony; and the beauty of 
the whole can only be realised by actual sight and study of the 
remarkable object itself. There are many other handsome an- 
cient brooches, such as the Ardagh brooch, the Roscrea brooch, 
et cetera — each with peculiar beauties of its own, showing some 
point or points of superiority to the Tara brooch, but none of them 
equalling it in total effect. 

Only by a very different kind of object, the celebrated Ardagh 
chalice, is the Tara brooch surpassed in richness and beauty of 
workmanship. A partial description of this celebrated chalice is 
here extracted from Miss Stokes' detailed description in her 
"Early Christian Art in Ireland" : 

"This Irish chalice combines classic beauty of form with the 
most exquisite examples of almost every variety of Celtic ornamenta- 
tion. The cup is composed of the foIlov\nng metals: gold, silver, 
bronze, brass, copper, and lead. The ornaments cut on the silver 
bowl consist of an inscription, interlaced patterns terminating in 
dogs' heads, and at the bottom a circular band of the Greek pat- 
tern. The mode of ornamentation is peculiar to this cup, being done 
with a chisel and hammer, as indicated by the lines being raised at 



3IO THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

each side, which could only be produced in the manner described. 
Round the cup runs a band composed of two semi-cylindrical rings 
of silver, ornamented with small annular dots punched out with a 
hollow punch. The space between the rings is filled by twelve 
plaques of gold repousse work, with a very beautiful ornamentation 
of fine filigree wire-work wrought on the front of the repousse 
ground, and carrying out, in its most delicate execution, the inter- 
laced pattern associated with the art of this country. Between the 
plaques are twelve round enamelled beads, 

"The handles of this chalice are composed of enamels (similar to 
those in the borders) and plaques of gold filigree work of the same 
stjde, but different in design. Each handle has four circular pieces 
of blue glass, underneath which the rivets are secured which fasten 
the handles to the bowl. Roimd the enamels was a circle of amber, 
divided into eight spaces by pieces of bronze, which has been eaten 
away. One of the enamels has a circle of gold grains at the top, 
which has been pressed in while the glass was in fusion. The two 
circular ornaments on the side of the bowl are of gold fdigree work 
of the very finest kind, with an enamelled boss in the centre; the 
frames which hold them are of silver. There are four settings at 
equal distances, which are receivers of the rivets that secure it to 
the bowl. In the settings were two pieces of blue glass (the same 
as in the handles), and two pieces of amber, which have fallen out. 

"The stem and supports of the bowl are of bronze metal, gilt, 
beautifully carved in interlaced and knotted patterns. They are at- 
tached to the bowl by a bronze gilt ball, with a strong square tang, 
and most ingeniously fastened by an iron bolt, which secures all to- 
gether. 

"The foot is of silver, circular, with a framework on the outer 
rim, having eight spaces, which are filled alternately with gold and 
bronze gilt plaques of open work; behind them pieces of mica are 
inserted, which throw out more clearly the very beautiful pierced 
designs with which these plaques are ornamented. The interme- 
diate spaces contain enamels (inferior to those in the upper part of 
the bowl), set in bronze. 

"In the inside of the foot of the bowl is a circular crystal, round 
which there has been a circle of amber, divided into twelve tablets, 
with a bronze division between each tablet ; surrounding this is a 
circle in gold filigree of the same style and workmanship as those 
already described. The next circle had tablets of amber, but they 
have all fallen out. In the space between this and the silver is a 
circular bronze plate, highly carved and gilt, in which are fine 
enamels in green. 

"The extreme outer edge, like the reverse side, is divided into 
eight spaces, in which are pieces somewhat similar to the gold plaques 
on the opposite side, with this difference, that six are in silver, and 
two in copper; tvi^o of the silver pieces are of the most beautiful 



VARIOUS ARTS OF ANCIENT IRELAND 311 

plated wire-work I have ever met with. Between those spaces are 
square pieces of blue glass, underneath which are ornamented pieces 
of wrought silver, which give them a brilliant appearance when in 
strong light. Between the circles which form the upper and under 
surfaces of the rim of the foot are plates of lead to secure and give 
weight to the whole. The enamels on the foot of the cup are of a 
coarse kind, the pattern being impressed in the glass, and the enamel 
melted into it. The num.ber of pieces of which the cup is composed 
amounts to 354, including 20 rivets. 

"The ornamental designs upon this cup belong to the Celtic 
School of Art, which, according to Dr. Petrie, reached its highest 
perfection as regards metal-work in this countrj^ in the tenth and 
eleventh centuries. Of these designs there are about forty different 
varieties, all showing a freedom of inventive power and play of fancy 
only to be equalled by the work upon the so-called Tara brooch. 

"There are two varieties of birds, with heads, necks, and legs 
elongated, and interlaced; and also animal forms interlaced. There 
are four dragons' heads, with sharp teeth which bear a strong re- 
semblance to drawings of similar objects in the 'Book of Armagh': 
also dogs, whose long protruding tongues form a knot above their 
heads. 

"Besides these ornamental designs there are two pieces of plaited 
silver wire, bearing a strong resemblance to Trichinopoli work." 

In the remains of beautiful metal work which we have, rep- 
resentative of various parts of the early ages, there seems to be, 
strange to say, a gap, when we come to the early Christian cen- 
turies of Irish history. We have the magnificent bronzes of the 
various pre-Christian ages, and again the truly extraordinary work, 
the brooches, et cetera, of the gold and silver smiths of the tenth to 
the twelfth centuries — -but little or nothing between. Dr. Petrie, 
in considering the absence of ecclesiastical shrines, representative 
of those early Christian centuries, concludes — and other author- 
ities agree with him — that the raiding of the Danes may account 
for this. Before the coming of the raiders he thinks there were 
few of the churches without beautiful shrines. Both directly and 
indirectly the Danish raiding might also account for the lack of 
profane objects of art, representative of those centuries — the tran- 
sition period between that which is distinctively of the pagan time 
and that which is distinctively of the Christian. During the Dan- 
ish time the annals are filled with such suggestive references as, 
for instance, they "devastated Clonmacnois and took therefrom 
great spoil of gold and silver, and many precious ornaments." 
(Annals of Ulster.) 

Of the latter span there are in existence many wonderful bell 



312 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

shrines, like that of St. Patrick's bell, St. Cualanus' bell — and 
shrines like the shrine of St. Mogue, the cross of Cong, the crozier 
of St. Dympna, the crozier of Liosmor, the crozier of Clonmac- 
nois, et cetera, all of them exquisitely displaying the extraordinarily 
beautiful work of the artists of those days. The shrine of the 
bell of St. Patrick, studded with gems, has silver plates ornamented 
with scrolls, and has handsome golden filigree knot-work. Animal 
forms on the sides are drawn out fantastically and doubled and 
twisted into interlaced scrolls. 

The making of beautiful shrines called cumdachs, for prized 
books, rarely occurred in any part of the world except Ireland, 
where it was comparatively common. 

These book shrines, made for particularly prized and valu- 
able books which had sacred association, were tastefully wrought, 
and richly ornamented — usually by saintly artificers. In the Mar- 
tyrology of Donegal, for instance, it is said of St. Ernin whose 
festival Is on August i8th: "Ernin, I. c., Mernog, of Fotharta of 
Leinster, a celebrated artificer. It was he who made 150 bells, 
100 croziers, and cumdachs for 60 gospels." 

The cumdachs were being made from the eighth century to 
the late twelfth, and even later. Some of the finest and most 
celebrated cumdachs are those of the Book of Kclls, the Book 
of Armagh, the Book of Durrow, the Domnach Alrgid (contain- 
ing St. Patrick's Gospels), the Cathach or Battlebook of the 
O'Donnells (containing St. Colm Cillc's Psalter), Dimma's book, 
the Book of St. Moling, the Stowe Missal, and of St. Molalse's 
Gospels. 

Ordinarily the books of those days were carefully kept in 
leathern satchels upon the embossing of which, In rare patterns, 
the plentiful artists of those days bestowed much thought and 
time and skill. 

But the first of the artists and probably the rarest of them, the 
man who blazed the way for both the leather worker and the 
metal artificer, was the scribe, who, In copying the sacred books 
was In the habit of ornamenting their pages and decorating their 
mp.rgins with the Irish knotted and Interlaced patterns, and also 
of beginning the chapters with an initial of elaborate and intricate 
design, frequently Illuminated In colours that time does not fade. 
In decorating and Illuminating the old manuscript books of Ire- 
land he exhibited skill and genius unparalleled in the world else- 
where. 

The work of these artist scribes was such as to compel GIraldus 
Cambrensis — who would rather libel Ireland than laud her — to 



VARIOUS ARTS OF ANCIENT IRELAND 313 

write of an Irish manuscript volume which he saw in Kildare, that 
it seemed to him more hke the work of angels than of men. He 
says : 

"If you look closely with all acuteness of sight you can command, 
and examine the inmost secrets of that wondrous art, j'ou discover 
such subtle, such fine and closely wrought lines, twisted and inter- 
woven in such intricate knots, and adorned with such fresh and 
brilliant colours, that you will readily acknowledge the whole to be 
result of angelic rather than human skill. The more frequently I 
behold it, the more diligently I examine it, the more numerous are 
the beauties I discover in it, the more I am lost in renewed admira- 
tion of it. Neither could Apelles himself execute the like: and in- 
deed they rather seem formed and painted by a hand not mortal." 

The Irish scribes In the sixth, the seventh, and the eighth cen- 
turies carried their art to a perfection which to-day surprises, and 
sometimes amazes, artists, scholars and critics of all nations. An 
eminent German authority upon such work, Dr. Waagen, Con- 
servator of the Royal Museum of Berlin, speaking of the old 
seventh century Irish Book of Kells says: 

"The ornamental pages, borders, and initial letters exhibit such 
a rich variety of beautiful and peculiar designs, so admirable a taste 
in the arrangement of the colours, and such an uncommon perfec- 
tion of detail, that one feels absolutely struck with amazement." 

And the English authority, Westwood, in his Palaeographia 
Sacra Pictoria says of this Irish art: 

"At a period when the pictorial art may be said to have been 
almost extinct in Italy and Greece, and indeed scarcely to have existed 
in other parts .of Europe — namely, from the fifth to the end of the 
eighth century — a style of art had been originated, cultivated, and 
brought to a marvellous state of perfection, in these islands, absolutely 
distinct from that of any other part of the civilised world — and 
which having been carried abroad by numerous Irish and Anglo- 
Saxon missionaries — ^was adopted and imitated in the schools founded 
by Charlemagne and in the monasteries established or visited by the 
former, many of which in after ages were the most famous seats of 
learning." 

Furthermore, Westwood quotes on the same subject the words 
of Digby Watt (whom he styles "one of the most accomplished 
living artists") : 



314 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

"In delicacy of handling and minute but faultless execution the 
whole range of paleography offers nothing comparable to these early 
Irish manuscripts and those produced in the same style in England — 
the latter being the work of Irish monks, or Saxon pupils of those 
monks." 

The Irish manuscript books of the early ages — both those in 
Ireland and the many treasured in a score of the great libraries 
of Europe — eloquently tell to these late ages not merely the mar- 
vellous skill of the Irish scribes, at home in Ireland and wander- 
ing everywhere over the Continent, but likewise tell of the highly 
advanced state of culture (of which this was the flowering) that 
obtained in Ireland fourteen hundred years ago. And they, fur- 
thermore, prove the certainty of preceding centuries of culture 
needful to account for such perfect efflorescence. 

Great were the numbers of learned and pious men who de- 
voted their lives then to the making of beautiful books, copying 
them in that penmanship whose perfection was, not merely un- 
equalled, but even unapproached, by any other people — and which 
throughout foreign countries made Ireland, already remarkable, 
for her learning, pre-eminently so for her caligraphy. For sev- 
eral centuries it was the Irish style of caligraphy, introduced by 
the Irish teachers, which obtained throughout the European 
countries. 

Ferdinand Keller says that the high degree of cultivation at- 
tained in Irish penmanship was not the result of mere individual 
excellence, but of the emulation of numerous schools of writing, 
backed by the improvements of many generations. 

The activity in copying books then, and the number of scribes 
engaged in the work, must have been enormous. When we find 
recorded in the Four Masters' chronicle of one century (the eighth) 
the deaths of no less than forty scribes so pre-eminent as to find 
place in a nation's annals nine hundred years later, we may in 
some measure imagine how vast must have been the ranks of ordi- 
nary workers. And as a corollary from that we may, to some 
extent, conceive of the multitude of the books of ancient Eirinn. 

Miss Stokes accounts for the style of ornamentation and illu- 
mination of these books by an art wave which she says originally 
came out of the southeast of Europe, and swept over the Continent 
northwestward, finally breaking upon the shores of Ireland — and 
remaining with Ireland when all traces of it had vanished in the 
countries over which it had passed. And in the Carlovingian 
period, when Irish monks and teachers were thronging abroad, 
the wave, reversing itself, rolled backward over its former course. 



VARIOUS ARTS OF ANCIENT IRELAND 315 

Traces of this peculiar Irish art, knotwork, and Interlaced pat- 
terns, most suggestive of the Irish designs, may be found in the 
very oldest churches in Lombardy, she says, and in the second and 
third century churches of Syria and Georgia. She acknowledges, 
however, that if her theory be correct, Ireland so modified the 
character of this eastern wave of art, as to evolve from it some- 
thing distinctively Irish. 

Dr. Ferdinand Keller as a result of his study of the subject 
came to the conclusion that because of striking similarity of tech- 
nique and peculiarities of colouring, Egypt was the cradle of Irish 
art. We know that early Irish holy men were in Egypt, and some 
of the old records show that Egyptian monks came to Ireland; the 
Irish monasteries, Keller says, were framed precisely after the 
model of the Egyptian ones, even the habit of the hermits dwell- 
ing In caves was brought therefrom. The productions of Alexan- 
drian artists, he says, found their way to Irish monasteries. And 
the serpentine band found In this Irish art work appears In the 
very oldest Egyptian and Ethiopian manuscripts, "with similarity 
of colour and combination, truly astonishing." He finds, more- 
over, that the spirit of the Irish work Is not the spirit of the west: 
"In all these ornaments there breathes a peculiar spirit foreign 
to the people of the west: in them is something mysterious which 
Imparts to the eye a certain feeling of uneasiness and suspense 
which must have originated In the east and could not possibly 
have been the creation of a fancy which derived Its nourishment 
and stimulus from natural objects so devoid of colour and form 
as present themselves in northern Ireland and the rocky Isles of 
western Scotland. 

Romllly Allen's opinion (in his work on Celtic Art) would 
sustain Miss Stokes and Dr. Keller In their theory that Irish Art, 
so called, did not originate in Ireland. He holds that the Celt 
never originated his art Ideas, but had a genius for attaching the 
ideas of others, and giving them such a strong Celtic tinge as en- 
tirely changed the outward character and produced something 
apparently original. 

Though many of the ancient Irish manuscripts are lit up with 
truly wonderful examples of the illuminating art, there Is not In 
all of them, anything finer or more wonderful, nor Is there to be 
found In any of the ancient books of the world anything more 
beautiful, than the famous monogram of Christ in the Book of 
Kells. 

That monogram, which occupies a full page. Is preceded by 
five Illuminated pages. Introducing the Gospel of St. Matthew, 



3i6 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

every one of which is in itself of much beauty. The series is 
crowned by this one expressing the name of Christ. Miss Stokes 
puts it: 

"In these six pages there is a gradual increase of splendour, the 
culminating point of which is reached in this monogram of Christ, 
and upon it is lavished, with all the fervent devotion of the Irish 
scribe every variety of design to be found in Celtic art, so that the 
name which is the epitome of his (rfie artist's) faith is also the 
epitome of his country's art." 

In examining this remarkable monogram a powerful micro- 
scope is needed to bring out all the beauties that are difficult of 
discovery to the naked eye, and to follow the magic pen of the 
artist, through all his minute, intricate, elaborate windings, twist- 
ings and knottings. This will be appreciated when it is mentioned 
that on one piece of a ribbon pattern of this work, in a space three 
quarters of an inch by half an inch, Westwood counted no less 
than one hundred and fifty-eight interlacings ! 

Of the superiority of early Irish music, something has already 
been said in these pages. Giraldus Cambrensis who was acquainted 
with the music of various nations, said, as a result of his study of 
the Irish music, "Its melody is filled up, and its harmony is pro- 
duced by a rapidity so sweet, by so unequalled a parity of sound, 
and by so discordant a concord." And of the Irish musicians: 

"They are incomparably skilful beyond all other nations I have 
ever seen. For their manner of playing on these instruments, unlike 
that of the Britons (Welsh) to which I am accustomed, is not slow 
and harsh, but lively and rapid, while the melody is both sweet and 
sprightly. It is astonishing that in so complex and rapid a move- 
ment of the fingers the musical proportions (as to time) can be pre- 
served; and that throughout the difficult modulations on their va- 
rious instruments, the harmony is completed with such a sweet ra- 
pidity. They enter into a movement and conclude it in so delicate 
a manner, and tinkle the little strings so sportively under the deeper 
tones of the bass strings — they delight so delicately, and soothe with 
such gentleness, that the perfection of their art appears in the con- 
cealment of art." The Welshman, Powell, tells us that in 1078 
Gryffith ap Conan, king of Wales, "brought over with him from 
Ireland divers cunning musicians into Wales, who devised in a man- 
ner the instrumental music now used there." 

The Danes borrowed their harp music from Ireland. Ire- 
land was, in the earliest ages, the school of music for Scotland. 



VARIOUS ARTS OF ANCIENT IRELAND 317 

It continued to be down till a recent period. The Scotchman, 
Jamieson, writing in the last century, says: 

"Within the memory of persons still living, the school for higher 
poetry and music was Ireland. And thither professional men were 
sent to be accomplished in these arts." 

Walker in his Irish Bards quotes Vincentio Gallilei as stating 
that Dante said the harp was first introduced to Italy from Ire- 
land. A Continental writer on the Crusades is quoted as testify- 
ing: "We may well think that all the concert of Christendom in 
these wars would have been as discord, had the Irish harp been 
absent." 

And from Bacon, Walker quotes: "No harp hath a sound so 
melting, and so prolonged as the Irish harp." It Is quite prob- 
able that Moengal, at St. Gall, had the Irish harp taught to Tuo- 
tilo and others, when he was making that school famous for its 
music. 

GeminiamI, says D'Alton, found no music as original as the 
Irish "on this side of the Alps." And Handel who called our 
bard Carolan the Irish Orpheus, said he would rather be the au- 
thor of Eiblin a run (Eileen aroon) than all the music he ever 
composed. 

The high esteem in which music was held in very early Ireland 
Is shown in a thousand legends : among others, in that one which 
has already been told of how St. Patrick, after Cas Corach the 
son of Bobd Derg had enchanted him on his Cran Ciuil, prom- 
ised that the professors of his art should be at all times the bed- 
fellows of kings. 

The musical Instruments were only a less esteemed and a little 
less adoringly cared for than the musicians. In the story of the 
Tain, when Fraech goes to court Findabar, daughter of Medb, 
the three harpers that went with him were the three sons of the 
famous Uaithne, harper of the Tuatha De Danann. 

"This was the condition of their harp. There were harpbags of 
the skins of otters about them, ornamented with coral, with an orna- 
mentation of gold and of silver over that, lined inside with snow- 
white roebuck skins; and these again overlaid with black-grey strips 
(of skin) ; and linen cloths, as white as the swan's coat, wrapped 
around the strings. Harps of gold, silver, and findruine, with fig- 
ures of serpents, and birds, and greyhounds upon them. These 
figures were made of gold and silver. According as the strings vi- 
brated (these figures) ran around the men." 



3i8 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Stokes, Miss Margt. : Early Christian Art in Ireland. 

Joyce, P. W. : Social History of Ireland. 

O'Curry, Eugene: Manners and Customs of Ancient Ireland. 

Manuscript Materials of Irish History. 

D'Alton, Jno. : Prize Essay on Irish History (Proc. R. I. A.). 

Irish Caligraphy (Ulster Jnl. of Arch.). 

Gilbert, Sir Jno.: Facsimiles of the Natl. MSS. of Ireland. 

Keller, Dr. Ferdinand: Illumination and Facsimiles from Ancient Irish 

MSS. in the Libraries of Switzerland. 
Wattenbach: "Die Kongregation der Schottenkloster in Deutschland." 

Translated by Dr. Reeves, with notes, in the lUlstcr Journal of ArchaeoL, 

vol. VII. 
Westwood: Palaeographia Sacra Pictoria. 
Petrie, Geo.: The Ancient Music of Ireland. 
Walker's Irish Bards. 



CHAPTER XXXVI 

THE ENGLISH INVASION 

It was in 1171 that Henry the Second Invaded Ireland. 

Seventeen years earher he projected an Invasion. And from 
the newly elected English Pope, Nicholas Breakspeare, Adrian the 
Fourth, he had then received an approving Bull. He had repre- 
sented to Adrian that in Ireland morals had become corrupt, and 
religion almost extinct, and his purpose was to bring the barbarous 
nation within the fold of the faith and under church discipline.'^ 

But first the opposition of his mother, and then political com- 
plications, caused Henry to postpone his project. 

For centuries now, dispute unending has raged around the 
two questions whether Ireland had lapsed Into irreliglon as rep- 
resented, and whether the Papal Bull was genuine. Undoubtedly, 
the centuries of the Danish terror had had disastrous effect upon 
religion in the island — and the question arises how far had reli- 
gious Ireland recovered Itself In the century and a half since the 
Danish power was broken. Those whose duty It was to sustain 
Henry's claim paint a discouraging picture. But Irish defenders 
say their picture Is purposely false. In reply they point to the 

^ To which Pope Adrian replied : 

"Adrian, bishop and servant of the servants of God, to the most dear son in 
Christ, the illustrious king of England, greeting, health, and apostolical benediction. 

"Thy greatness, as is becoming a Catholic prince, is laudably and successfully 
employed in thought and intention, to propagate a glorious name upon earth, and 
lay up in heaven the rewards of a happy eternity, by extending the boundaries of 
the church, and making known to nations which are uninstructed, and still ignorant 
of the Qiristian faith, its truths and doctrine, by rooting up the seeds of vice from 
the land of the Lord and to perform this more efificaciously, thou seekest the coun- 
sel and protection of the Apostolical See, in which undertaking, the more exalted 
thy design will be, united with prudence, the more propitious, we trust, will be 
thy progress under a benign Providence, since a happy issue and end are always 
the result of what has been undertaken from an ardour of faith, and a love of 
religion. 

"It is not, indeed, to be doubted, that the kingdom of Ireland, and every island 
upon which Christ the sun of justice hath shone, and which has received the prin- 
ciples of the Christian faith, belong of right to St. Peter and to the holy Roman 
church (which thy majesty likewise admits), from whence we the more fully im- 
plant in them the seed of faith, that seed which is acceptable to God, and to which 
we, after a minute investigation, consider that a conformity should be required by 
us the more rigidly. Thou, dearest son in Christ, hast likewise signified to us, 

319 



320 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

wonderful work done during this period for the rehabilitation of 
religion, by the great Primates Cellach, Malachi, and Gelasius; 
and also the holy St. Lawrence O'Toole; to the synods that were 
held; to the many beautiful churches and abbeys that were being 
erected; and to the number of Irish kings, who, resigning their 
thrones entered monasteries and devoted themselves to God. 
Many were the princes who went on pilgrimage then. Holy men 
devoted to the religious life were also flocking abroad to join the 
noted Irish communities in Germany, that were propagating the 
faith over Central Europe. 

That the standard of learning in the schools was held high is 
evident from the fact that Primate Gelasius and twenty-six bishops, 
at the Synod of Clonard a few years before the English invasion, 
decreed that only graduates of the University of Armagh (which 
was directly under Gelasius) should be appointed professors of 
theology in the schools of Ireland. And it will be recalled how 
that Adrian the Fourth himself heaped eulogy upon his Irish tutor 
in the University of Paris, the holy and learned Irishman, Mari- 
anus. Professor of the Liberal Arts there. And any one who im- 
partially studies the subject can hardly avoid the conclusion that 
religion in Ireland in the twelfth century, though very far from 
occupying the shining place that it did before the coming of the 
Danes, must again have become a living issue. 

A most convincing piece of evidence in point is the admission 
of Giraldus Cambrensis, tutor or secretary of Prince John, a man 
not only in the employ of the conquerors, but notoriously pos- 
sessed of much anti-Irish prejudice, a man too who travelled over 
a third of Ireland and must have known whereof he spoke. Cam- 
that for the purpose of subjecting the people of Ireland to laws, and eradicating 
vice from among them, thou art desirous of entering that island; and also of pay- 
ing for each house an annual tribute of one penny to St. Peter; and of preserving 
the privileges of its churches pure and undeftled. We, therefore, with approving 
and favourable views commend thy pious and laudable desire, and to aid thy under- 
taking, we give to thy petition our grateful and willing consent, that for the ex- 
tending the boundaries of the church, and restraining the prevalence of vice, the 
improvement of morals, the implanting of virtue, and propagation of the Christian 
religion, thou enter that island, and pursue those things which shall tend to the 
honour of God, and salvation of his people; and that they may receive thee with 
honour, and revere thee as their lord ; the privilege of their churches continuing 
pure and unrestrained, and the annual tribute of one penny from each house re- 
maining secure to St. Peter and the holy Roman Church. If thou therefore deem 
what thou hast projected in mind, possible to be completed, study to instil good 
morals into that people, and act so that thou thyself, and such persons as thou 
wilt judge competent from their faith, words, and actions, to be instrumental in 
advancing the honour of the Irish church, propagate and promote religion, and 
the faith of Ch-ist, to advance thereby the honour of God, and salvation of souls, 
that thou mayest merit an everlasting reward of happiness hereafter, and establish 
on earth a name of glory, which shall last for ages to come." 



THE ENGLISH INVASION 321 

brensls says: "The clergy of that country are highly to be praised 
for their religion and among other virtues with which they are 
endowed, their chastity forms a peculiar feature. Those who are 
entrusted with the divine service do not leave the church but apply 
themselves wholly to the reciting of psalms, prayers and readings. 
They are extremely temperate in their food, and never eat till 
towards evening when their Office is ended." When the clergy of 
a country draw from an invading enemy such remarkable testi- 
mony to their religious ardour, it is difficult to believe that the 
people from whom these clergy were drawn, wallowed in the mire 
of irreligion." 

But if we supposed Ireland to be irreligious then, strange in- 
deed would be the choice of an apostle in Henry, a man of vicious 
life, a supporter of anti-Popes, and reasonably suspected of, and 
all but excommunicated for, instigating the murder of the holy 
Thomas a Becket. 

Those who contend that the Bull was an English fabrication 
for impressing the irreligious Irish and making easy their conquest 
point to the fact (among other assumed proofs) that the most 
ancient copies of the document discovered lack both date and sig- 
nature. They say that both Adrian's "Bull" and the later con- 
firmatory letter ascribed to Pope Alexander the Third,' exhibit 
evidence of being fabricated by the same hand — just as they were 
published at the same time, namely, at the Synod, in 1173, con- 
voked by order of Henry. But the arguments of those who con- 
tend that these were forgeries seem to crumble when met by the 
fact that they were published In the lifetime of Alexander, and 
were not then disowned or contradicted. 

On DervorglUa, the wife of Tighernan O'Rourke, prince of 
Breffni, is placed the indirect, and on Diarmuid MacMurrough, 
king of Leinster, the direct, odium of bringing In the English. 

2 A while later, after the island had been wasted by wars, the British Stanihurst 
bears this testimony: "The majority of the Irish are very religious. Their priests 
are dignified, and by their wholesome admonition, the consciences of the people who 
are docile and respectful are very easily worked upon." 

3 "Alexander, bishop, servant of the servants of God. to his most dear son in 
Christ, the illustrious king of England, health and apostolic benediction. 

"Forasmuch as those things which are known to have been reasonably granted 
by our predecessors, deserve to be confirmed in lasting stability, we, adhering to 
the footsteps of Pope Adrian, and regarding the result of our gift to you (the 
annual tax of one penny from each house being secured to St. Peter and the holy 
Roman church), confirm and ratify the same, considering that its impurities being 
cleansed, that barbarous nation which bears the name of Christian, may by your 
grace, assume the comeliness of morahty, and that a system of discipline being 
introduced into her heretofore unregulated church, she may, through you, effec- 
tually attain with the name the benefits of Christianity." 



322 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Dervorgilla eloped with MacMurrough — when both were of ages 
not usual to the principals in such escapade, for she was over forty 
and he over sixty at the time. The tradition is that Dervorgilla 
invited MacMurrough to carry her oft, on occasion when her hus- 
band had gone on pilgrimage to St. Patrick's Purgatory in Loch 
Dearg (Tir-Conaill), and MacMurrough quickly complied.'* 

Some however say that MacMurrough forced her off against 
her will. Anyhow, when being carried off she cried out and 
screamed, either in seeming or real protest. It was in 1152 that 
this abduction occurred. In the following year O'Rourke was 
able to move the Ard-Righ, Roderick O'Connor of Connaught, 
to go against MacMurrough, which he did, punishing his prov- 
ince, and bringing away from him Dervorgilla.'' 

Again, thirteen years later, when MacMurrough's strong 

■* Moore imbeds the tradition, in one of his songs : 

The valley lay smiling before me. 

Where lately 1 left her behind ; 
Yet I trembled and something hung o'er me 

That sadden'd the joy of mind. 
I look'd for the lamp which, she told me, 

Should shine when her pilgrim return'd ; 
But, though darkness began to enfold me, 

No lamp from the battlements burn'd. 

I flew to her chamber — 'twas lonely. 

As if the loved tenant lay dead ; — 
Ah, would it were death, and death only! 

But no, the young false one had fled. 
And there hung the lute that could soften 

My very worst pains into bliss, 
While the hand that had waked it so often 

Now throbb'd to a proud rival's kiss. 

There ivas a time, falsest of women ! 

When Breffni's good sword would have sought 
That man, through a million of foemcn. 

Who dared but to wrong thee iu tlioiujlit ! 
While now — O degenerate daughter 

Of Erin, how fallen is thy fame ! 
And through ages of bondage and slaughter 

Our country shall bleed for thy shame. 

Already the curse is upon her. 

And strangers her valleys profane ; 
They come to divide — to dishonour, 

And tyrants they long will remain. 
But onward ! — the green banner rearing. 

Go, flesh every sword to the hilt ; 
On our side is Virtue and Erin, 

On theirs is the Saxon and Guilt. 

•'■' She afterwards entered the Convent at Mellefont and devoted the remainder 
of a long Hfe to the service of God. 



THE ENGLISH INVASION 323 

northern ally O'Loughlin of Tir-Eoghan died, the injured 
O'Rourke with Ard-Righ Roderick, the king of the Danes of 
Dublin, and many Leinster chiefs who hated MacMurrough for 
his tyranny, went once more against MacMurrough, overcame, 
and banished him. He fled oversea to Britain, and rested not 
till he reached Henry II of England who was then fighting in 
Aquitaine. This king he entreated to aid him in Ireland. The 
English king, who could not then comply, gave Diarmuid letters 
authorising any of Henry's subjects who so wished to go to Ire- 
land to aid him. MacMurrough had these letters publicly read 
in the market-place in Bristol. Richard de Clare the Norman- 
Welsh Earl of Pembroke popularly known as Strongbow, a bold 
and daring warrior, but also a spendthrift now nursing broken 
fortunes, was interested in the prospect of repairing his fortunes 
in Ireland. MacMurrough tempted him with the offer of his beau- 
tiful daughter Aoife in marriage, and the heirship of the Leinster 
kingdom. Strongbow, however, being then in disfavour with 
Henry, feared to go until he had got express permission and ap- 
proval from his monarch. But in the meantime he recommended 
that some of his close relatives should help MacMurrough. And 
de Clare's half-brothers, the knights Robert Fitz Stephen and 
Maurice Fitz Gerald, undertaking to go to his aid in the spring, 
MacMurrough now quietly returned and spent the winter in the 
Monastery of St. Madog at Ferns. 

In May, 1169, with a small but efficient body of thirty knights 
in full armour, sixty horsemen in half armour, and three hundred 
archers, Fitz Stephen (and his Uncle Herve de Mont Maurice) 
landed at Bannow, Wexford — and another Knight Maurice de 
Prendergast with a company of about three hundred. The main 
body of the common fighters were Flemings. On receiving the 
news of their landing, MacMurrough raised a body of five hun- 
dred from among his Leinster subjects and joined them. And 
together they marched against the Danish city of Wexford, which, 
after repulsing two assaults, capitulated to the strange army with 
its armoured horses and horsemen and its wonderfully skilled and 
disciplined soldiers. MacMurrough bestowed the city upon Fitz 
Stephen, and settled near-by lands upon de Prendergast and de 
Mont Maurice. 

Surrounding princes heard v*/ith dismay the news of the new 
kind of fighters that MacMurrough had brought in, and the won- 
derful skill and discipline which made three of them as good as a 
hundred. To make matters worse MacMurrough added to his 



324 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

army some two thousand soldiers who were in the capitulated city. 
Yet this did not deter his enemy MacGiolla Padraic, king of Os- 
sory, against whom MacMurrough now marched, putting up a 
struggle from which MacMurrough and the Norman-Welsh and 
their Flemings had much difficulty winning out. But the Chiefs of 
Diarmuid's own Leinster met him with submission — excepting only 
O'Toole and O'Faelan, whom he went against and wasted and 
spoiled — before he again rested at Ferns. 

The Ard-Righ and princes of the other provinces looked on 
inactive. The Four Masters say, "And they set nothing by the 
Flemings." In almost every century of Ireland's history merce- 
naries had been brought in from abroad by one prince or another 
to help in his battles against a neighbouring Irish enemy. And 
now every prince, occupied as usual with his own problems, was 
not much concerned about what did not immediately affect his own 
territory. 

Diarmuid went against the Danish city of Dublin, but had 
to content him with getting hostages and lavish presents of gold 
and silver. 

Roderick O'Connor at length took alarm, gathered an army 
and marched against MacMurrough, and his mercenaries. Mac- 
Murrough and Fitz Stephen, however, met him with offer of nego- 
tiation instead of battle. Roderick commanded that MacMur- 
rough should make submission and that the foreigners should at 
once depart for Britain. MacMurrough readily accepted the first 
condition, giving his own son as hostage — but only secretly agreed 
(or rather pretended to agree) that he would manage to get the 
foreigners out of the country quietly and leisurely. Then Rod- 
erick acknowledged MacMurrough as King of Leinster. 

MacMurrough having got needed peace, pursued his own plan. 
He was now fired with ambition to be High-King. He got a 
fresh accession of strength in the arrival of Maurice Fitz Gerald 
and another body of troops from Wales. He instigated to rebel 
against Roderick his son-in-law, O'Brien of Desmond — who, with 
the help of Fitz Stephen defeated the High-King. Diarmuid sent 
again to Strongbow pleading with him to come over. But the 
latter, having not yet received Henry's permission, sent over a 
small body of men under Raymond le Gros, who on landing, be- 
ing joined by Mont Maurice, won (by clever strategy) a signal 
victory over an attacking army composed of the Waterford men, 
the men of Ossory, and O'Faelan's men, at Dundonald, near Wa- 
terford. Of forty prisoners whom they took, they broke the limbs 
and flung them from the cliffs into the sea — giving Ireland the first 



THE ENGLISH INVASION 325 

taste of the conqueror's savagery that was henceforth to fill the 
centuries. 

Strongbow followed, in a few months, with two hundred 
knights and a thousand men, and joining le Gros and Mont Mau- 
rice, twice attacked the important city of Waterford, and was twice 
repulsed. Then, when it seemed unlikely they could succeed, le 
Gros had the good luck to discover that one of the city houses 
projecting through an angle of the wall, had its projecting corner 
supported by timbers. Cutting away the supports, the house fell, 
giving a breach in the wall through which the attackers poured, 
overcame the surprised garrison, slaughtered the inhabitants, and 
put the two Danish rulers of this Danish city to death, and held 
Waterford for their own. 

On hearing of Strongbow's landing, Diarmuid, with the fair 
Aoife hurried south to join him. And the marriage of himself 
and Aoife was celebrated amid the still bloody scenes in Water- 
ford. 

Then, to punish O'Rourke they marched into Meath and 
Breffni, laying everything waste as they went. Roderick, weak- 
ling that he was, and not able to command the support of his sub- 
ordinate princes, sent warning to MacMurrough to desist — and 
got insulting reply that when O'Rourke was finished with, Rod- 
erick and his own province of Connaught would receive their at- 
tention. Diarmuid's death, that winter, put an end to an inglori- 
ous career. 

Then Strongbow would assert his right to the throne of Lein- 
ster, much of whose lands he divided amongst his followers. But 
the Leinster chiefs refused to have him. Moreover, Henry, hear- 
ing of his successes in Ireland, had grown jealous, and fearful of 
Strongbow establishing his independence. He now peremptorily 
summoned Strongbow and all his subjects to return to England, 
forthwith. 

Strongbow readily found reasons for refusal and delay. By 
a brilliant feat of arms he saved Dublin from capture by the 
combined forces of Roderick and his princes with thirty thousand 
men on land, and Godred, Danish king of Man, with thirty ships 
in the bay — not only saved the city but completely broke and scat- 
tered the army of Roderick, and captured great booty and pro- 
visions. Then he wasted Meath and Breffni, and afterward hur- 
ried south to Wexford, where Fitz Stephen was besieged by the 
Irish — but arrived too late to save the city. Then in response to 
another summons from his royal master, he hastened to Henry, 
very humbly laid his conquests, cities and territories, at his angry 



326 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

monarch's feet — only begging that he might be made Henry's 
tributary from Leinster.^ 

Strongbovv's report upon the goodliness of the prize beyond 
the Channel, stimulated Henry now to go to the winning of it. 
And he went — with five hundred knights and four thousand horse 
and foot soldiers, in four hundred ships — landing at Waterford, 
October, 1171. His conquest of the southeast of the island was 
little more than a triumphal march; for the Irish princes and 
chiefs of the south and east thronged in to do homage to the great 
man. Without question the extraordinary skill of the Normans 
in the art of war, their effective system and wonderful discipline, 
their eminently superior equipment, their armour against which 
the 'weapons of the Irish were of little use — all had telling effect 
upon the minds of the chiefs. Besides, they knew that there was 
not, and had not been, the cohesion amongst them that would en- 
able them to maintain a united front against an invader with such 
powerful army. Of course they only considered it in the light of 
minor kings giving a kind of formal acknowledgment to the might 
of a greater — a thing which they had always been used doing to- 
ward the greater one of their own. The acknowledgment of a 
greater, the giving of hostages, and even paying of tribute to 
him, had never affected and had never been meant to affect, their 
own independence, and the independence of their own territory. 
Yet well they must have known the vast difference between sub- 
mission to one of their own, and to a foreign invader. It shows 
lamentable demoralisation, and stamps their memory with lasting 
shame. 

MacCarthy of Desmond first came in and made submission 
at Waterford. He was followed by O'Brien of Thomond, at 
Lismore, then O'Faelan of the Deisi, MacGillapatrick of Ossory, 
and other Leinster chiefs as Henry marched to Dublin. In Dub- 
lin came to meet him and pay homage, O'Rourke of Breffni, 
O'Carroll of Oriel, and O'Mellaghlin of Meath. 

None of the northern chiefs came in, nor of the western. Nor 
did Roderick, the Ard-Righ — but he contemplated, with growing 
alarm, the successive submissions of the various princes, and finally 
sent messengers to Dublin inviting a parley at the Shannon. To 
the rendezvous came Henry's envoys — with the result that Rod- 

6 While Strongbow was absent Dublin was again attacked, this time by its 
Danish king Hasculf MacTurkell, who had escaped to Norway when the city was 
first taken, and now returned with ships and armies from Scandinavia, Denmark, 
the Western Isles of Scotland and the Isle of Man — ten thousand men under John 
the Dane. Again, the clever strategy of the Normans, now under Miles and 
Richard de Cogan, defeated and destroyed the great attacking army. 



THE ENGLISH INVASION 327 

erick O'Connor, through these envoys, made peace and friendship 
with Henry, as one king with another, and also an act of submis- 
sion to one whom he acknowledged to be greater than he. 

During that winter Henry made still more progress in win- 
ning and securing to himself the fealty of the princes. In a Dub- 
lin palace which he had constructed of osiers he kept court and 
entertained lavishly all the winter long. With the choicest repasts, 
prepared by the best Norman cooks, he won through their stom- 
achs to the hearts of the chiefs — this supplemented by his own 
gracious suavity, in contrast to the bluntness, sometimes brutality, 
of the Norman-Welsh who had preceded him. The adroit Henry's 
affability and politeness, and apparently real friendship and af- 
fection, had far more compelling force in winning fealty than 
would have had the shock of his army. 

Then he won Rome, too. He had a synod of the Irish eccle- 
siastics — all but the Primate Gelasius, and the other northerns — 
called at Cashel, where, following the example of their chiefs, 
the Bishops acknowledged Henry as lord supreme in Ireland. At 
this synod they passed decrees for the bettering of church discipline, 
Avhich, being sent to Rome, confirmed the fact that Henry w^as 
carrying out his undertaking, and reforming morals in the land, 
and evoked from Alexander the Third the letter confirmatory of 
Adrian's Bull. 

At Easter Henry had to return in haste to England, carrying 
with him the undisputed lordship of Leinster, Meath and the 
cities of Dublin, Wexford and Waterford. Meath he gave in 
trust to De Lacey — who had the governorship of Dublin also. 
The city of Dublin was given to the occupation of the merchants 
and people of Bristol. Strongbow was left in possession of Lein- 
ster. 

The strange mesmerism which the presence of Henry seemed 
to have wrought on the Irish princes was dissipated on his going. 
They awoke to the rude reality that they had welcomed an invader 
and meekly accepted him. From the various quarters they began 
to rise up against the enemy, harass him, and endeavour to drive 
him out. Now more familiar with, and therefore less daunted 
b3'-, Norman discipline and equipment, the Irish princes set strategy 
against skill, and discovered that the Normans were not omnipo- 
tent, O'Brien of Thomond inflicted a big defeat upon them at 
Thurles — not the only big defeat that he was to give them.. 
Strongbow the mighty was beaten back in the south and bottled 
up in Waterford in imminent danger of capture. And, only that 
the redoubtable le Gros hurried back from Wales to release him 



328 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

he would have been overthrown. Roderick O'Connor with the 
help of O'Neill, O'Mellaghlin, O'Carroll, MacDunleavy of 
Uladh, and an army of twenty thousand overran Meath, and set 
out for Dublin which he might easily have captured but for his 
vacillation. He soon after thought it to be to his advantage to 
make treaty with Henry. He sent to England for that purpose 
Concord, Abbot of Clonfert, Catholicus, Archbishop of Tuam, 
and Archbishop Lawrence O'Toole of Dublin. This treaty, known 
as the Treaty of Windsor, acknowledged Henry's right to the 
lordship of Leinster, Meath, and the other few places and cities 
then occupied by him. He was also acknowledged as the overlord 
to whom Roderick should pay formal tribute. On the other hand 
it acknowledged Roderick's right to the high-kingship of five- 
sixths of Ireland. 

But such pacts had little effect either in securing peace or in- 
suring the rights of either party. Every Norman chief warred 
on his own account, for purpose of extending his power and pos- 
sessions. And of course every Irish chief and prince, when oppor- 
tunity offered, warred against the invader. 

But such demoralisation set in, that in short time not only was 
Irish chief warring upon Norman baron, but Irish chief was war- 
ring with Irish chief, Norman baron warring with Norman baron, 
and a Norman-Irish alliance would be warring against Normans, 
or against Irish, or against another combination of both. 

The Normans not only marked their progress by much slaugh- 
ter and many barbarities, but signalised themselves by robbing and 
burning churches and monasteries, and oftentimes slaughtering 
the inmates.^ 

They harried, robbed, ravished, and destroyed wheresoever 
they went. And against one another, in their own feuds, they 
oftentimes exercised as much barbarity as against the Irish. Fear- 
fully true is the Four Masters' word that MacMurrough's treach- 
erous act "made of Ireland a trembling sod." 

After a time Milo de Cogan and Robert Fitz Stephen won 
territory for themselves in Munster. John de Courcy won the an- 
cient territory of Ulster — Down and Antrim — and established 
himself at Downpatrlck. Cardinal Vivian, the Pope's legate, saw 
de Courcy, on his entrance thereto, slaughtering the peoj^e on the 

'' Giraldus complains to John, "The poor clergy are reduced to beggary, the 
Cathedral churches which were rich, endowed with broad lands by the piety of the 
faithful in olden times, now echo with lamentations for the loss of their possessions 
of which they have been robbed by these men and others who came over with, and 
after them ; so that to uphold the Church is turned into spoiling and robbing it." 



THE ENGLISH INVASION 329 

street. Connaught (despite the Treaty of Windsor) was granted 
to De Burgho (Burke). But it was a long time after it was 
granted to him before he was enabled — with the help of some of 
Connaught's own — to find a foothold there. 

Prince John, whom Henry had appointed Lord of Ireland, 
came over in 1185, when he was nineteen years of age, and made 
himself most beneficial to the country by reason that he, with the 
crowd of young libertines who formed his court, made mock of 
and Insulted such Irish chieftains as hastened to pay him homage. 
His attitude and actions during the short time he was permitted 
to remain in the country were proving splendidly disastrous to 
English prospects there and magnificently helpful to Irish. 

Only a few years later John de Courcy, the conqueror of Ul- 
ster, and the very strongest figure among those Normans, was 
overwhelmingly defeated In an attempt to conquer Connaught, and 
his army almost annihilated. And the Irish princes had recovered 
enough proper pride and national spirit to form a compact, under 
Connor of Maenmagh, son of Roderick, for driving out the Eng- 
lish — which might now have been easily accomplished. But be- 
fore their plans were perfected Connor was slain, and the grow- 
ing compact dissolved. Indeed had they at any time after Henry's 
leaving been able to combine and strike together, the English, de- 
spite the great advantage of discipline, skill, and equipment, could 
have been driven Into the sea. The key of the arch, however, 
which should have been the strongest stone was the weakest — 
ever ready to crumble. This was Ard-RIgh Roderick, who not 
only lost Ireland but eventually lost Connaught. His own sons 
warred against him and warred against one another as well. He 
was deposed, exiled, recalled, travelled — a kind of royal beggar 
— to princes who had been tributary to him, entreating them to 
put him on the throne again. With an Ard-RIgh thus disobeyed 
and disrespected by his own, and his kingdom, which should have 
been the dominant one, warring within Itself, the fates were with 
the foreigner, and they precariously held their own in the east, 
occasionally making effective plunges Into the independent prov- 
inces that surrounded them, and occasionally too having their own 
insecure possessions lunged into by the Irish enemy. 

The English royal house was in worse condition even than the 
Irish royal house. Henry died cursing his sons, and his sons may 
be said to have lived and died cursing one another. John, who 
had essayed to oust his worthier brother Richard — v/hile the lat- 
ter was on the Crusade — and also while he was languishing in a 
German prison — began to reign over England in the last year of 



330 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

the twelfth century, very shortly after Donal MacCarthy of Des- 
mond defeated the English of Munster and drove them out of 
Limerick. The great northern prince, Flaherty O'Muldory of Tir- 
Conaill, had just then passed away. And also just then had passed 
unfortunate Roderick O'Connor — who died where he had spent 
his last days, in the Abbey of Cong in Mayo — and was buried in 
the ancient cemetery of Clonmacnois. 



CHAPTER XXXVII 

NORMAN AND GAEL 

The Norman Kings used the Church for all purposes of statecraft, 
its higher officers were checks and spies upon popular movements, 
while its ablest bishops, neglecting their spiritual offices, were wholly 
absorbed in temporal administration. The episcopate was thor- 
oughly secularised and the character of the bishops became very 
bad. The pious chroniclers in England have left us lurid pictures 
of the moral degradation of their greater Churchmen of these 
ages. Their passage to Ireland brought no access of sanctity. 
They acted as viceroys for the King of England. The Irish Church 
was treated with great cruelty and the direst oppression. Its 
bishops were driven from their sees, the canons from their cathe- 
drals, the priests from their parishes. A Gaelic monk could not 
be harboured in a monastery, or an Irish nun in a convent, in any 
district where their writ ran. From the pulpits they thundered : 
"It is no offence against God to kill any Irish human being." They 
displayed real ability and amazing zeal in leading their troops in 
the field and in building mighty castles at all strategical points, 
throughout the land. The sword of Mars, God of War, was their 
sceptre, not the Cross of the Prince of Peace. They extended the 
long arm of excommunication against our race; rarely did they 
uplift the hand of benediction. In their complaint to Pope John 
XXII, Donald O'Neill, King of Ulster, and the other princes 
of the Gael (131 8) declared: "As it very constantly happens, 
whenever any Englishman, by perfidy or craft, kills an Irishman, 
however noble, or however innocent, be he clergyman or layman 
. . . nay, even if an Irish prelate were to be slain, there is no 
penalty or correction enforced against the person who may be guilty 
of such wicked murder, but rather the more eminent the person 
killed, and the higher the rank which he holds among his own 
people, so much the more is the murderer honoured and rewarded 
by the English, and not merely by the people at large, but also by 
the rehgious and bishops, of the English race, and, above all, by 

331 



332 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

those on whom devolves officially the duty of inflicting on such male- 
factors a just reward and equitable correction for their evil deeds." 
Henry of London was typical of his race and class. At once 
King John's Viceroy of Ireland and Archbishop of Dublin, he spent 
more time in hunting the red deer than in seeking out lost souls. 
He had a passion for other people's money. He flayed the hum- 
bler English, as well as the Irish, under his jurisdiction. To build 
the notorious Dublin castle, he pulled down several churches. By 
wiping out the Gaelic See of Glendalough, in Wicklow, hallowed 
by the sanctity, and famed for the Greek, Latin, and Irish learn- 
ing, of Saint Kevin and his successors, he erected St. Patrick's 
Church into a cathedral. He gave the people their first experience 
of foreign landlordism in Irish history and received the title of 
Scorch-Villa'ui or Burn-Bill m return. On being installed Arch- 
bishop he summoned his tenant farmers to arrange their rents, 
telling them to bring their title deeds with them. "Mistrusting 
nothing," they placed their parchments in his hands, which, before 
their faces, he cast into the fire. Before they recovered from the 
shock and amazement their title deeds were turned to ashes. It 
was then the turn of the men of Glendalough to blaze and burn: 
"Thou, an archbishop! Nay, thou art a Burn-Bill, a Scorch ViU 
lain.^^ Another drew his weapon and cried: "As good for me to 
kill him as to be killed, for when my title deeds are burned and my 
living taken away, I am killed." The prelate, thoroughly fright- 
ened, escaped by a back door, but his officials and bailifts were well 
beaten, and some of them "left for dead." The outraged tenants 
even threatened to burn the palace, and would have done so if their 
just wrath had not been appeased by "fair promises that all should 
be to their content." 

The process of reducing Ireland by incastellation — or castle- 
building — was pursued with restless enthusiasm; and so successful 
was it that in less than seventy years three-fourths of the country 
was under Anglo-Norman sway. The contemporary Gaelic 
historian lamented that the Irish, who wore no armour, were no 
match for their foes "in one mass of iron." The Normans were 
well supplied with the most efficient and the most deadly war weap- 
ons of the Europe of that day, and were much better organised than 
the Irish. 

Yet the remarkable fact remains that the Gaels were not driven 
back upon any one part of the kingdom, but remained scattered, J 
yet unconquered, among the foreigners. The Normans in great ; 
strength occupied the present Counties of Antrim and Down in 
Ulster; in Leinster, Louth, Meath, Dublin and Kildare, with the 



NORMAN AND GAEL 333 

greater part of Westmeath, were densely held by Normans, and 
by their allies, Flemings, Welsh and Saxons. They had a firm hold 
of Limerick and the adjoining districts; their stone fortresses 
stretched to the very mouth of the Shannon. In Connaught the 
rule of De Burgo extended from Galway northward and eastward 
over the western plain and communicated through Athlone with 
their allies in Leinster. On the other hand, the remainder of 
Ulster and the adjoining districts were stoutly maintained by the 
O'Neills, O'Donnells, O'Farrells, O'Reillys, and O'Rourkes. In 
the Central Plain of Leinster, the O'Conors of Offaly, the 
O'Mores of Leix, and the O'Carrols of Ely, sat tight on their 
ancestral lands, in spite of the foreigners' efforts to dislodge 
them. In the mountainous parts of Wicklow, along the uplands 
of Carlow and Kilkenny, the Gaels kept undisputed rule. In 
Munster, MacCarthy More reigned in Muskerry and preserved 
the title of King of Desmond; Thomond, in great part, retained the 
royal sway of the O'Briens. Along the western coast, beyond 
Lough Corrib, the fierce O'Flahertys continued to live free men, 
and the north-east of Connacht still elected its own sovereign as 
The O' Conor. The Normans recognised the O'Conors as Kings 
of Connacht. 

Surveying with not a little pride and much vainglory the re- 
sults achieved by the invaders, Giraldus Cambrensis gave to his 
Latin story of the events the title "Hibernia Expugnata" — "Ire- 
land fought to a finish." But he did not understand, nor did his 
successors down the ages understand, the amazing vitality of the 
Gaels' power of recuperation, mental and physical. Beaten they 
have been, time and again, but never conquered. The spirit of 
exaltation of our manhood, the intense prayerfulness of our spir- 
itual-minded, white-souled, indomitable womankind, have mocked 
at Despair, laughed in the face of Misfortune itself. And when 
the race was thought to have been prostrated forever it arose and 
rang out its triumphant battle-cry! 

Neither then, nor ever after, did the foreign invader come to 
understand Ireland's soul. Spenser, in Elizabeth's days, vainly 
tried to solve the problem of the resurgent spirit of Irish nation- 
ality. Why did not the Gaels acknowledge defeat? "Yet surely," 
he allows, "they are very valiant and hardy, for the most part great 
endurers of cold, labour and all hardiness, very active and strong 
of hand, very swift of foot, very vigilant and circumspect in their 
enterprises, very present in perils, very great scorners of death." 
The resurrection of thirteenth century Ireland, and its subtle con- 
quering of the conqueror, has been a source of wonder to English- 



334 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Irish historians who have tried to explain it in many futile ways. 
The truth is that the free-hearted, culture-loving, gracious comity 
of the Gaels and of Gaelic civilisation irresistibly insinuated itself 
into the mind and soul of the Norman French — and won from them 
eager capitulation. 

In their darkest hour of affliction the princes of the three great- 
est Gaelic clans — almost all that possibly could assemble — met at 
Caol Uisage near the Belleek on the river Erne (in 1258) to knit 
the country into one body to withstand the foreigner. The men of 
Connacht, under Felim O'Conor and the warriors of Thomond 
under O'Brien, cheerfully elected Brian O'Neill of Tir-Owen King 
of Ireland. This menace was met by the treacherous capture and 
the poisoning of O'Neill by De Courcy, who defeated the combined 
forces. at the battle of DoAvnpatrick (1260). The lesson of this 
disaster by which "Eire was left an orphan" was most fruitful. 
The Irish were "clad in fine linen garments, the foreigners in one 
mass of iron" : as the contemporary Gael narrates. Hence was 
seen the need of better means of defence against the common foe. 
The epochal advent of the gall-oglach (gallowglass) into Ireland's 
armies resulted. 

From the Western Isles of Scotland were invited the heavy- 
armed, mail-clad, battle-axe-bearing gall-oglach to aid in the cause. 
These stalwarts were the descendants of the Ulster Gaels who had 
migrated there and intermarried with the Norse. Like their fore- 
bears they, too, were "very great scorners of death." Later, the 
princes throughout Ireland raised and similarly equipped regular 
field troops. In fact, Eire saw the form and spirit of her ancient 
Fianna or national militia, come to life again. By this new factor 
the tide of foreign conquest was turned. No longer did the Nor- 
man cavaliers "in one mass of iron" inspire terror, no more were 
their castles regarded as impregnable fortresses. O'More of Leix 
levelled eight such strongholds in one day. Sir Henry Savage, the 
Norman, expressed his views pithily on this altered condition of 
warfare. "Never shall I, by the grace of God," he declared, 
"cumber myself with dead walls: my fort shall be where young 
bloods are stirring and where I have room to fight. Better is a 
castle of bones than a castle of stones." The Norman policy of 
conquest by incastellation was defeated by the gall-oglach enter- 
prise, so quickly adopted now by all the leading Irish chiefs. 

To quicken the tide of liberation Donal O'Neill and the other 
Gaelic lords invited Edward Bruce, brother of the King of Scot- 
land, to the throne of Ireland. The winning, in rapid succession, 
of eighteen victories, made the gallant Bruce reckless, so engaging 



NORMAN AND GAEL 33? 

a vastly superior force at Faughart, near Dundalk (13 18), he was 
slain. His Connacht allies, the O' Conors, were routed at Athenry. 
But after a temporary ebb success after success again followed the 
banners of the intrepid Irish. Even the English rulers in Dublin 
were brought under subjection. MacMurrough Kavanagh, King of 
Leinster, became virtually King of Dublin, and received from the 
city an annual tribute. When Murrough O'Brien, King of Munster, 
burst upon the English assembled at Castle Dermot in Kildare they 
were so terrified that they would not fight; they gave him vast 
sums of money, war-horses, and other equipment to buy peace. As 
the fourteenth century approached its end the English everywhere 
trembled. 

To remedy this state of affairs, Richard II, of England, landed 
in Ireland with an immense army and swore a mighty oath that he 
would not leave the country until he had taken Art MacMurrough 
alive or dead. 

Art was a true Irish King. The chroniclers record that "he 
held in his fair hand the sovereignty and the charters of the province 
of Leinster. At his approach the whole (of the English of) Lein- 
ster trembled." Again, "he was replete with hospitality, knowl- 
edge and chivalry; the prosperous and kingly enricher of churches 
and monasteries, with his alms and offerings," Art barred Rich- 
ard's way. Even his 30,000 men were no match for the Irish. 
The French author who has left us a record of this Invasion de- 
clares that the Gaels were utterly fearless, were "as bold as lions." 
In contest after contest the English were shattered. In this French- 
man's opinion the Irish could not be conquered "while the leaves 
were on the trees." So with a heavy heart Richard hied him back 
home a sad, broken man, to be deprived of his crown and kingdom 
by the Duke of Lancaster, He was the last English monarch until 
the seventeenth century who tried the impossible task of conquering 
Ireland. MacMurrough was poisoned by an agent of the English 
Government. The final result of the Irish rally was that English 
rule was cooped within the Pale — a palisaded district stretching 
some thirty miles around Dublin — and It held shadowy sway In a 
few of the walled towns, which were, In reality, little Republics. 
Almost all Ireland was Independent early In the fifteenth century. 

Irishwomen have been famed, and wooed, In all ages and in 
many lands for their chastity, wit, vivacity, tenderness, intelligence, 
and beauty. Intermarriages with the British, or Welsh, princes 
went on from the twilight of history. Many Saxon lords, too, 
sought wives In Ireland. Even before the Invasion the Norman 
Earl of Shrewsbury ( 1 100) sent an ambassador to crave a princess 



336 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

of the House of O'Brien in wedlock: but Magnus, King of Den- 
mark, secured her for his own son, Sitric, King of Man. On the 
day when the victorious Richard, Earl of Pembroke, surnamed 
Strongbow, married Eva, daughter of Dermot MacMurrough, 
King of Leinster, on the blood-soaked battlefield of Waterford 
(1170), the Irish conquest of the Norman conquerors was begun. 
For marrying the Lady Rose O'Conor, daughter of Rury, King 
of Connacht, the elder Hugh de Lacy roused the ire of Henry II, 
and won dismissal from his post as chief Governor of Ireland. 
The second Hugh de Lacy took unto wife the daughter of Alan, 
Lord of Galloway, grandson of King Baliol of Scotland. The re- 
nowned Richard de Burgh, the mighty "Red Earl" of Ulster, 
espoused Una, daughter of Prince Hugh O'Conor. Their daugh- 
ter married into the Royal house of Scotland. Hence the Bruces, 
through the female line, were descended from MacMurrough, 
King of Leinster, and Robert's wife, Ellen, Queen of Scots, daugh- 
ter of the "Red Earl," came of the royal lineage of the O'Conors 
of Connacht. William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke, the ablest 
soldier of his day, wedded Isabella, daughter of Eva and Strong- 
bow. Their eldest son, William, was the husband of Eleanor 
Plantagenet, sister of Henry III of England. On his death, she 
became the wife of the famous Simon de Montfort, Earl of Lei- 
cester. The King of Scotland took another of her sisters to wife. 
The daughter of the last Earl of Ulster married Lionel, Duke of 
Clarence, brother to Edward III of England. The seed of 
MacCarthy More, King of Cork, and of Petronllla de Bloet, 
passed into the House of Stuart and fructified in the person of the 
Sixth James of Scotland (First James of England). As generation 
succeeded generation all the Irish clans, in the five-fifths of Eirinn, 
were united in ties of blood with, and helped to conquer to Gael- 
dom, all the Norman families. 

With Scotland, north of the Grampians, Gaelic Scotland, there 
was no break in relationship adown the ages. It is no exaggera- 
tion to say that intermarriage and community of language, customs 
and interests, made the north and west of Ireland and Argyll and 
the western Scottish Isles one family estate. Inverness was the 
capital of Gaeldom in the Middle Ages. The Scottish Kings 
made commercial treaties and social compacts in favour of the 
Irish of Ireland and to the detriment of the English of Ireland. 1 
The result of the blending of the two races, Irish and Anglo- / 
Norman-French — Gaels and Sean Ghalls — was an enriching and 
deepening of national life in every department — paralleHng like 



NORMAN AND GAEL 337 

happenings in England and Scotland. The absorption of the in- 
vaders occurred earlier in the Green Isle. 

"If the speech is Irish the heart is also Irish," as an English 
official bitterly declared. So long as the Irish retained their native 
culture and language, their power of assimilating what was best 
in other resident races was marvellous. The Sean Ghalls (old 
foreigners) became "more Irish than the Irish themselves." They 
donned the Irish national dress, used the Irish tongue, fostered 
Irish literature and music, ruled their subjects by the Brehon laws, 
and because they thus became essentially Irish they won the devo- 
tion and fidelity of the people. They even discarded their own 
Norman names in favour of Irish names. Sir John Davies, in the 
reign of James I of England, deplored their conduct: "As they did 
not only forget the English language and scorned the use thereof, 
but grew to be ashamed of their very English names, though they 
were noble and of great antiquity, and took. Irish surnames and 
nicknames." The De Burghs were transformed, first into Burkes, 
then into MacWilliams. The De Birminghams became MacYoris; 
the Dexecesters, Macjordans; the De Angulo family was hence- 
forth known as MacCostello. "In Munster, of the great families 
of the Geraldines planted there, one was called MacMorice, chief 
of the House of Lixnaw; and another MacGibbon, who was also 
called the White Knight." . . . "And they did this in contempt 
and hatred of the English name and nation whereof these degen- 
erate families became more mortal enemies" to England than the 
Gaels. 

Because they fell under the spell of the wide culture of the 
Gaels, with its deep humanities, its kindly, genial atmosphere, there 
was "utter ruin" to English interests. Perhaps in no other race 
was the doctrine of the equality of man so well understood as among 
the Gaels. The meanest clansman of an O'Neill or a MacDonnell 
stood on an equal footing with his chieftain. When Art MacMur- 
rough and three other Irish kings visited Richard II in Dublin the 
English were horrified to see the royal guests sitting down to table 
with their minstrels and whole retinue. "They told me this was a 
praiseworthy custom of their country," records the official scribe, 
but such democratic conduct would not be allowed by this feudal 
master of ceremonies. So they were separated — the kings were 
sequestered at one table, the retinue at another. "The Kings 
looked at each other and refused to eat, SiLj'mg I had deprived them 
of their old custom in which they had been brought up." But the 
boorish "allotted tutor in manners" informed them that it was not 



338 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

decent or suitable to their rank, "for now they must conform to the 
manners of the English." "With the dignity of courteous guests" 
they yielded. When Sir John Harington visited O'Neill he found 
him seated in the open surrounded by his clansmen. In such a 
position he averred he would rather be "The O'Neill than the 
King of Spain." Harington marvelled at the love and admiration 
the Gaels exhibited toward their lord. "With what charm such a 
master makes them love him I know not: but if he bid come they 
come; if go, they do go; if he say do this, they do it." 

The habit of the Normans fostering their children with mothers 
of the Gael and having them to act as sponsors in baptism for their 
children, was hateful to the English Government. "Both of which," 
adds Davies, "have ever been of greater estimation among this peo- 
ple than with any other nation in the Christian world. . . . Foster- 
ing hath always been a stronger alliance than blood, and foster- 
children do love and are beloved of their foster fathers and their 
sept more than of their natural parents and kindred, and do par- 
ticipate of their means more frankly, and do adhere unto them in 
all fortunes with more affection and constancy." 

England bitterly bewailed the "degenerate" fate in Ireland of 
its own original conquerors — the Norman-French. On the other 
hand, the Gaels, with truer insight, declared that these Sean Ghalls 
(Old Foreigners) "gave up their foreignness for a pure mind, 
their surliness for good manners, their stubbornness for sweet mild- 
ness, and their perverseness for hospitality." 

Drastic steps were taken to prevent the amalgamation of the 
races, to blight the bloom of Gaelic-Anglo-Norman civilisation. 
The notorious Statute of Kilkenny (1367) was but one of a long 
series of legislative acts designed for this purpose. It begins thus: 
"Many of the English of Ireland discarding the English tongue, 
manners, style of riding, laws and usages, lived and governed them- 
selves according to the mode, fashion and language of the 'Irish 
enemies,' and also made divers marriages between themselves and 
the Irish, whereby the said lands and the liege people thereof, the 
English language, the allegiance due to their lord the King of Eng- 
land, and the English laws, were put In subjection and decayed, and 
the Irish enemies exalted and raised up, contrary to reason." So It 
declared any such alliance high treason.'- It declared war on gos- 
slpred, on fostering, on the Irish language, on Irish culture, on 
Irish music and its professors, on Irish law and its judges, on Irish 

iThe godfathers and godmothers of the same child were gossips. The chil- 
dren nursed by the same mother were fosters. Two boys nursed on the same milk 
were foster-brothers. 



NORMAN AND GAEL 339 

games and pastimes, on the Irish clergy, on Irish manners and 
customs, on Irish trade and commerce. The English born in Eng- 
land were no longer to be dubbed "English churls or clowns," nor 
were the English born in Ireland to be called "Irish dogs." To 
crown all, the English Archbishops and Bishops pronounced sen- 
tence of excommunication against all who disobeyed the statute. 

Love mocked at such penal laws. The wedding bells continued 
to ring down the corridor of the centuries. The prospect of being 
hanged, drawn, disembowelled, and quartered — the legal penalty — 
had no terrors for the Irish, New or Old, Sean Ghalls or Gaels.^ 
Every avenue of tyranny and of terror was explored to find means 
of arresting the irresistible tide of Gaelicism. If a wayfarer was 
seen either riding in the Irish fashion, or dressed in Gaelic costume, 
or not wearing "a civil English cap," it was "advisable and lawful" 
to murder the offender. Even the sporting of a moustache after 
the Irish fashion (the fashion on the Continent then also) and not 
having a shaven upper lip like the English, was denounced by Act 
of Parliament (25 Henry VI, 1447) as deserving of death, and the 
delinquent's estate was to be forfeited to the Crown. 

'"I would not give my Irish wife for all the dames of the Saxon land; 
I would not give my Irish wife for the Queen of France's hand; 
For she to me is dearer than castles strong, or lands, or life — 
An outlaw — so I'm near her, to love till death my Irish wife. 

"I knew the law forbade the banns — I knew my king abhorred her race — 
Who never bent before their clans must bow before their ladies' grace. 
Take all my forfeited domain, I cannot wage with kinsmen strife — 
Take knightly gear and noble name, and I will keep my Irish wife." 



CHAPTER XXXVIII 

TRADE IN MEDIEVAL IRELAND 

The risen waters of a common Irish life flooded even the walled 
towns. At the first Invasion the King of England had banished all 
the Irish, who were not granted "English liberty," from these 
urban communities, and replaced them with his own subjects, allow- 
ing, however, the numerous Portuguese, Spanish, French-Norse 
and Flemish merchants and traders to abide therein. From that 
time onward it had been an accepted principle that no Irishman 
should be allowed to engage in trade or commerce, or accepted as 
an apprentice to any handicraft where English power was felt. 
Then, with delicious irony, their writers derided our people as 
"idlers, hating honest business." By letters of denization, by peace- 
ful penetration, by intermarriage, the Gaelic clansmen, by the fif- 
teenth century, formed the bulk of the Craft Gilds, even in Dublin, 
and made not a little headway in obtaining a foothold in the Mer- 
chant Gilds. The town merchants, from the very beginning, had 
to journey into the country to buy the far-famed Irish woollens, 
rugs, mantles, and linens, to bargain for hides and beautiful peltries, 
flax, beef, and corn. So in time, partnerships were formed with 
the Clans, and Irish law in the Irish tongue was pleaded in the 
town courts. The merchants, like the Norman lords, dressed 
themselves in the banned national costume, spoke, even in Dublin 
and Waterford, the Irish tongue, and took part in all the inhib- 
ited festivities of the Gael. If proof were needed that these mer- 
chants were not, as is so often stated, English, it will be found in 
the fact, attested by the records in Continental archives, that whilst 
English traders and factors in Spain, Portugal, Oporto, Italy, the 
Hansa Towns, Flanders, Russia and elsewhere, used their own, or 
the French language, in commercial transactions, the Irish and the 
Scots employed Latin only. Latin was spoken by all educated peo- 
ple throughout Gaeldom. Moreover, in nearly all commercial 
treaties the foreign potentates describe our merchants as of "the 
Irish Nation." In Spain and Portugal, "the noble Irish," as they 

340 



TRADE IN MEDIAEVAL IRELAND 341 

were there known, obtained more valuable privileges than the Eng- 
lish. So great was the commercial intercourse with the Peninsula, of 
the O'SuUivans, MacCarthys, Desmonds, O'Driscolls, O'Flahertys, 
O'Malleys, and of the merchants from the seaports from Water- 
ford to Sligo, that the waters which lapped the southern and west- 
ern coasts of Ireland were designated by map-makers "The Spanish 
Seas." "Portlngal" became a proper name in Southern Ireland. 
Men of that race were elected as Mayors of our towns. "Spain" 
yet survives as a surname in our land. The great Italian financial 
houses, the bankers of Lucca, the Ricardi, the Friscobaldi, the 
Mozzi and the Bardi of Florence, were active agents in Mediaeval 
Ireland. The wine trade, as shown by the Pipe Roll accounts, and 
other sources, was of great dimensions, with Clan and Town. Bor- 
deaux, Dordogne, Libourne, St. Emilian, besides Spain, Portugal 
and Oporto, traded direct with the Irish ports. 

With France the records of our trade go back to the days of 
St, Patrick, Rouen was the chief port of Normandy and obtained 
from Henry II the "monopoly of Irish trade." Bordeaux had a 
colony of Irish merchants — as had St. Omer, Marseilles, Bayonne, 
St. Malo, La Rochelle, Nantes and other ports — who were Im- 
porters of Irish wool, skins, hides, fish, woollen cloth, fine linen, 
leather* and corn, and they sent to Ireland their own manufactures 
and products. 

The enterprising Flemings were stationed In many of the Irish 
ports. Their Influence on maritime and inland trade was as benefi- 
cent here as it was In England. In Kilkenny, Youghal, Cork, 
Waterford and New Ross they were most numerous. On the 
other hand, Irish merchants had their own settlements In all the 
leading ports of Flanders, In the old records of Bruges, Ireland, 
as distinct from England, Is mentioned as one of the seventeen 
nations whose corporations added to the fame of that port. It 
had its own commercial houses there — two bore the proud name, 
"Ireland," and the third "St. Patrick," "a lofty and beautiful 
edifice," This last was a sixteenth century foundation. In 1399 
Philippe le Hardi made Ecluse (Sluys) a staple town for Irish 
mantles and cloths. This duke's safe-conducts to Irish merchants 
In 1387 and In other years have been printed. In all trading char- 
ters to Englishmen, Irishmen are specifically mentioned likewise. 
With a view to encourage the home manufacture of wool the Duke 
of Flanders (1496-7) forbade the importation of foreign cloths. 
Thereupon a clamour arose from the populace to be allowed still 
to buy the cheaper Irish cloth and linens, Irish cloaks and Scottish 
kerseys; and Archduke Philippe gave orders that such goods from 



342 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Ireland and Scotland should continue to be imported and sold 
"according to the old custom." A Flemish writer of the sixteenth 
century, lamenting the decay of Bruges, its rival Antwerp, obtain- 
ing all its commerce, tells us that the Irish merchants in his own 
time held two fairs a year at Bruges where they exposed for sale 
their friezes, mantles, serges, and great quantities of furs and skins. 
He laments their loss because the Irish friezes and serges were of 
such stout material and so cheap that they were largely used by 
the working men and the poorer classes. Irish leather goods were 
renowned throughout Europe, so it is not a matter of surprise that 
Irish names should figure on the Tanners' Gild of Liege, then the 
most extensive and famous body of this craft on the Continent. At 
Brabant fairs Irishmen were busy also. Their corporation retail- 
ing, not merely all varieties of furs, skins, "beautiful leather goods," 
but also rough cloth and high class serges. Antwerp, too, had its 
Irish trade, linen being mentioned, amongst other items. Lubeck 
had commercial intercourse with Ireland, and Irish woollens were 
carried down the Rhine : Cologne being one of the marts. Through 
the Hansa Towns Irish commerce flowed on to Russia. 

The Irish had a hospital at Genoa, before the Norman Inva- 
sion, circa 1160. In 1398, there is record of Patrick Galway, a 
member of an opulent mercantile family in Cork, trading there in 
copper, tin, linen cloth, and "innumerable other things," "wools and 
merchandise." As yet little concerning the commerce between 
mediaeval England, Ireland and Italy is known. Bonifazio del 
Uberti, in his poem, Dittamondi, tells us that "Ireland is worthy 
of fame for the woollen stuffs she sends us." Irish serge was used 
in Naples as trimmings for the robes of the king and queen. Its 
presence in Florence, Genoa, Como, and Bologna, is known to all 
students of Commerce in the Middle Ages. Irish mantles were 
heirlooms in the families of many wealthy Italian merchants. It 
was worn by the fashionable ladies of that luxurious town, Flor- 
ence. Machiavel declares that woollen manufacture was the prin- 
cipal industry in this city, and maintained the majority of its op- 
erative classes. In that opulent emporium of European and Asiatic 
trade, the Florence of 1350, the "noble stuffs" of Ireland were 
eagerly sought for by the haughty dames of the princes of Com- 
merce and Finance. In 1382 the Pope's envoy obtained the privi- 
lege of bringing with him to Italy, duty free, a number of articles 
in which figure "Five mantles of Irish cloth — one lined with green. 
One russet garment lined with Irish cloth." 

Irish silk is mentioned in the wardrobe accounts of Queen Clem- 
ence of Hungary. She had two robes of this material, the one 



TRADE IN MEDIAEVAL IRELAND 343 

violet and the other without indication of colour. The dearer must 
have been a most expensive article, for it is priced twenty Parisian 
pounds (probably £400 of our money). Our "silk" is mentioned 
in many French accounts during the Middle Ages. Its fame at- 
tracted the cupidity of the London mercers, evidently, for in a six- 
teenth century lawsuit, there is a claim for some London silk stolen 
"called Irish silk." Whether this was a superfine linen or the srol 
mentioned in the ancient Irish MS. I cannot decide. 

Irish cloth, mantles, rugs and serges were highly esteemed in 
Spain and Portugal, likewise. "At this time," writes Macpherson, 
"there were some considerable manufactures in Ireland. The stuffs 
called sayes (serges) made in that country were in such request, 
that they were imitated by the manufacturers of Catalonia, who 
were in the practice of making the finest woollen goods of every 
kind." The Irish merchants traded with the Canaries and pushed 
their way into the Land of the Moors. Prince Henry the Nav- 
igator had his own agent in Galway, to whom he sent an African 
lion, one of the earliest seen in Europe, knowing that "never be- 
fore had such a beast been seen in that part." 

One of the most famous legends in the Middle Ages was the 
"Voyages of St, Brendan." This saintly old mariner of Ardfert, 
Co. Kerry, was said to have been the first discoverer of "Great 
Ireland," as the Icelanders of the tenth and eleventh centuries 
called North and Central America. Washington Irving in his 
"Life of Columbus" narrates that "during the time that Columbus 
was making his proposition to the Court of Portugal, an inhabitant 
of the Canaries applied to King John II for a vessel to go in search 
of the island. The name of St. Brendan was from time immemorial 
given to this imaginary island, for when the rumour circulated of 
such a place being seen from the Canaries, which always eluded 
the search, the legends of St. Brendan were revived, and applied 
to this unapproachable land." "It is a well known fact," avers 
the Rev. D. O'Donoghue in his learned work, "St. Brendan the 
Voyager," that Columbus while maturing his plans for his great 
expedition, visited Ireland as well as Iceland in quest of information 
bearing on his theories. He was assisted in his researches by an 
Irish gentleman named Patrick Maguire, who accompanied him 
also on his great voyage of discovery. There are other Irish names 
on the roster of the ship's crew, preserved in the archives of Ma- 
drid; but by Father Tornitori, an Italian priest, in the seventeenth 
century it is specially recorded that Patrick Maguire was the first 
to set foot on American soil. He says that on the eventful morn- 
ing of the landing the boats bearing Columbus and some of his 



344 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

crew were launched; but approaching the land, the water shallowed, 
and Patrick Maguire jumped out to lighten the boat, and then 
waded ashore. 

Space forbids the recital of the Interesting history of the com- 
mercial fame of Irish horses, hawks, and of the great wolf hounds 
which were eagerly sought for by the crowned heads of the Con- 
tinent of mediaeval Europe. 

Only a brief reference can be made to the widespread commer- 
cial intercourse with England. The records of trade with Bristol 
and the Welsh ports go back to the fringe of mythological times. 
Irish weavers emigrated in large numbers to Bristol, where they 
acquired great power. They were represented on that town's 
Corporation. Its Coopers' Gild had many Gaels among its mem- 
bers. From Ireland came more than seventy per cent of its trade. 
Irish commercial activity aroused the jealousy of the merchants of 
Canterbury against such "alien Irishmen." Gloucester, Chester, 
Runcorn, Cambridge, Coventry, Oxford, Preston, Winchester, Lon- 
don, Hereford, Southampton, and St. Albans are some of the towns 
where Irish manufactures were sold and Irish merchants busy. 
There was bitter contention and long strife between Gloucester and 
Bristol, Bristol and Chester, Chester and Runcorn, over the monop- 
oly of Irish trade. In 148 1, Edward IV issued a proclamation 
that every Irish ship charged with goods for Runcorn, or any other 
place in Cheshire, should first discharge at Chester. Yet, in this 
very year, one Edward Walshe obtained a license to sail his ship 
direct from Runcorn to Ireland. In 1439 an ordinance was made 
that no Irishman born "shall henceforth be elected on the Council 
of Bristol by the Mayor under a penalty of £20 each from the 
Mayor and from the Irishman." The Coopers' Gild shut down its 
doors "from henceforeard" against Irishmen, "rebels against our 
liege lord the king." "These strangers and aliens not born under 
the king's obedience . . . but rebellious . . . were put in occupation 
of the craft of weavers; . . . and have so greatly multiplied and 
increased within the town of Bristol that the king's liege people 
within the town and other parts were vagrant and unoccupied, and 
may not have their labour for their living." Withal these enact- 
ments would seem to have become a dead letter, for in Tudor days 
Irish was spoken there, and its Irish residents numerous. 

There is unimpeachable evidence that agriculture was skilfully 
and extensively pursued from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century. 
The exportation of enormous quantities of wheat, oats, barley, 
rye and of other cereals, and of flax (besides what was used for 
the big home consumption of linen), of beef, mutton, and other 



TRADE IN MEDIiEVAL IRELAND 345 

food stuffs, as well as of wool, point to intensive land cultivation 
and stock raising. To a modern Irishman the quantities of these 
products exported to France, Scotland, Flanders and England, as 
recorded in official and other documents, seem incredible. This was 
when England was ruled by the first three Edwards (1272-1377). 
The Editor of the Calendar of Documents, Scotland, is of opinion 
that Ireland must have been a veritable Land of Goshen then, and 
truly adds that no merchants would go there to seek corn to-day. 
In the fifteenth century London Corn Market Irish wheat was sold. 
English agents reported that "Ireland fed Spain and Portugal with 
corn." 



CHAPTER XXXIX 

LEARNING IN MEDIEVAL IRELAND 

After the crushing defeat of the Norsemen by King Brian at the 
Battle of Clontarf (1014) there was a flowering of the National 
Mind in hterature. So the political freedom of the fourteenth and 
fifteenth centuries saw a re-birth of intellectual, as well as of agri- 
cultural and commercial activity in Ireland. It was a Golden Age 
of Gaelic Literature. 

As the wider gates of Ireland's commerce opened on the South 
and West coasts, so her scholars, pilgrims, clerics and craftsmen 
followed in the wake of her merchants, through the Gaulish seas 
into France and Italy, and "over the brief ocean" into Spain and 
Portugal, to drink at the fountains of knowledge there. The uni- 
versities of these Romance lands knew a long succession of our 
brilliant scholars. The congregation of Irish and Scottish students 
at the University of Paris (1300-1600) was greater than even the 
number who enriched their minds at Oxford. "The Latin educa- 
tion of Ireland," observes the erudite Scotch Professor Ker, "be- 
gan earlier, and was better maintained there than elsewhere" in 
Europe. The reason whereof may be found in the truth that the 
culture and refinement of these Romance or Latin lands made a 
more lively appeal to the Gaelic mind and soul than did the civil- 
isation of England. The restless ebb and flow of the Irish of the 
Middle Ages from Eirinn to the Continent, carried with it much 
that was noblest in literature, in civility, and in manners. It is in- 
teresting to note the most popular Irish translations made by these 
scholars of the Greek and Latin classics. For the delectation of 
their readers and auditors they gave admirable adaptations, 
amongst others, of the Tale of Troy, the Saga of Alexander the 
Great and Philip of Macedon, The Wanderings of Ulysses, The 
Theban War, and the i^neid. Some of the Greek stories were ren- 
dered through the Latin versions. It would be idle to conjecture, 
at the present stage of our enlightenment, how far the famed 
knowledge of Greek of eighth and ninth century Ireland was maln- 

346 



LEARNING IN MEDIAEVAL IRELAND 347 

tained and carried to and through the fifteenth century. Such of 
these translations as have been brought to light indicate how ex- 
pert and how original was Gaelic scholarship. The Irish used 
their authorities as Shakespeare used his, transforming them into 
virtually new works. They gave us transmutations rather than 
translations. The infinite tenderness of the Gaelic heart, the loving 
minuteness of observation of the Irish eye, is evidenced by the ex- 
quisite Nature touches in their verse and prose — for they were 
enamoured of the blue sky, the rhythm of the rustling leaves, the 
subtle magical lure of Spring's annual awakening. The exquisite 
song of the stars, the haunting music of running waters, the mys- 
terious tongue of boughs shaken by the wind, were wine to their 
veins. They talked to the joyous birds, to the frisking rabbits, and 
even to the shy fishes, as though they were their brothers, sisters 
and lovers. Strangely enough, these literary men eliminated all ref- 
erences to supernatural agencies, found in the classical texts. The 
tales became Irish sagas, in spirit and in truth, with the foreign 
names alone standing for their national heroes. Like all peoples 
who have passed through seas of sorrow, through "the seven 
waves of tribulation!" they abounded in mercy. Tenderness and 
Chivalry, quite unknown to the classical originals, are commingled, 
with the texture of the tales whenever possible. But the most re- 
markable fact lies in the emergence of the Love Story, pure and 
simple. This form of narrative is one of the glories of early 
Irish literature, wherein feminine influence sheds a glow of sweet- 
ness and dignity, of benignity, chastity and refinement. From Eng- 
lish literature the Irish made many notable translations. Thus Fin- 
gin O'Mahony, "a wise man skilled in Latin, English and Irish," 
gave us a fine interpretation of Sir John Maundeville's "Travels" 
(1475). "Guy of Warwick," "Bevis of Hampton," and Turpin's 
"Chronicles" are among the present known translations, which 
have escaped the ravages of time. As might be expected, Spanish 
and French romances were turned into Irish for the entertainment 
of the people. The extent of the learning of these days is known, 
in small part only, to archivists. It awaits generations of Irish 
and Scottish scholars to glean, garner and elucidate, so that the 
ordinary student may realise its depth, comprehensiveness and 
grandeur. 

In the knowledge of Astronomy mediaeval Ireland was In ad- 
vance of most European lands. All the greater Lords of the Gaels 
and Sean Ghalls had their official astronomers. It was but natural 
that a nation of rovers and travellers should have maintained a 
sound standard of geographical learning in their schools. In med- 



348 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

icine, Europe could teach the Gaels but little. The King of Eng- 
land had not better pharmaceutical lore or more adept surgical 
skill at his command than the O'Briens in Munster or The Mac- 
Cailim Mor in the Western Isles of Scotland. Only a very tiny 
portion of a world of medical Gaelic MSS. has been edited and 
translated by experts. An O'Shiel, clan doctor to O'Neill, ban- 
ished from Ulster into the Low Countries by the cruel hand of per- 
secution, becomes at the Court of Brussels European-famed, there- 
by justifying the Four Masters' epithet, "The Eagle of Physicians." 
The contemporary Spaniards and Portuguese praised the skill and 
acquirements of the medical Doctors of Gaeldom. It is worthy 
of remembrance that Lionel, Duke of Clarence, brother to Edward 
III, King of England, and promulgator of the Statute of Kilkenny, 
employed none but Irish physicians for himself and his court. In 
science, in architecture, in the changing fashions of the goldsmiths' 
art, we see how the Irish were influenced by the skill and the refine- 
ment of the European Continent. 

The Irish Brehon Law Code goes back to a much earlier epoch 
than the days of St. Patrick. Its interpreters were deeply rever- 
enced by the Irish people because of their even-handed justice. 
There is not a single instance in recorded history of a brehon (a 
Gaelic judge) accepting a bribe, or being deflected a hair's breadth 
from the dictates of equity through personal bias or family inter- 
ests. The refined attention of Gaelic law to the .minutiae of the 
rights of property has won praise from its bitterest foes. Every 
chieftain had his own Brehon "to decide the causes of that coun- 
try." "Three doors," declared the Irish, "through which truth is 
recognised: a patient answer, a firm pleading, appealing to wit- 
nesses. Three glories of a gathering: a judge without perturba- 
tion, a decision without reviling, terms agreed upon without fraud." 
English officials exhausted the vocabulary of abuse in condemna- 
tion of the Brehon Law, "hateful alike to God and Man," as they 
said. Yet they were amazed how cheerfully, how uprightly, the 
Gaels obeyed its decisions. Even their traducer. Sir John Davies, 
was fain to pay this tribute: "There is no people under the sun 
that doth love equal and indifferent (impartial) justice better than 
the Irish, or will rest better satisfied with the execution thereof, 
although it be against themselves, as they may have the protection 
and benefit of the law upon which just cause they do desire it." 
Chief Baron Finglas has left the valuable testimony that his coun- 
trymen, who were loudest in jibing at the Irish law, did not obey 
their own laws. "Yet divers Irishmen doth observe and keep such 
laws which they make upon hills in their country, firm and stable. 



LEARNING IN MEDIEVAL IRELAND 349 

without breaking them for any fear of favour." Let another Eng- 
lish official give just judgment. Payne says Gaelic government was 
"done with such wisdom, equity, and justice as to be worthy of all 
praise." "For I myself," he continues, "have seen in several places 
within their jurisdiction well nearly twenty cases decided at one sit- 
ting, with such indifference (impartiality) that for the most part 
both plaintiff and defendant hath departed contented." This bal- 
anced justice displeased such of his countrymen as "live by blood," 
hence "they utterly mislike this or any other good thing that the 
poor Irish man doth." "The Irish keep their promise faithfully 
and are more desirous of peace than the English; nothing is more 
pleasing to them than good justice." 

The Irish brehons were men of deep learning, of wide influence 
and of riches. Three signs marked their abodes, so said the peo- 
ple, "wisdom, information, intellect." In the Annals we read of 
many of them being professors of new and old laws. Civil and 
Canon law. 

If the English hated Brehon laws, the Irish had comedies, which 
were played in the open air, burlesquing English law and its 
judges. 

A contemporary author ( 1351) gives a vivid and joyous picture 
of the intellectual gatherings in mediaeval Ireland, wherein clan 
feuds and distinctions were forgotten and the spirit of a common 
nationality supplanted the passion of war by the nobler craving 
for peace. Liam O'Kelly, Lord of Hy-Many in Connacht, in that 
year invited all that was best in the mind and the hand of Gaeldom, 
as well as the professors of fun and merriment, to his castle. For 
it was the lofty privilege of lords, chieftains and of the wealthy, 
to foster such assemblies. "The company that read all books, they 
of the Church and of the poets both: such of these as shall be per- 
fect in knowledge, forsake not thou their intimacy ever" — such 
was the admonition given to their rulers by the people. "The 
chroniclers of comely Ireland," says our authority, "it is a gather- 
ing of a mighty host, the company is in the town ; where is the street 
of the chroniclers?" 

O'Kelly, chief poet, in a fine description of the gathering, com- 
pared the streets of tents that lodged the learned to the letters in 
a manuscript, and his princess' banner-decked castle to the illumi- 
nated capital letter.^ 



1 "The fair, generous-hearted host provides another spacious avenue of white 
houses for the bardic companies and the jugglers. Such is the arrangement of 
them, ample avenues between, even as letters in their lines. Each thread, bare. 
smooth, straight, firm, is contained within two threads of smooth, conical-roofed 
houses.' The ridge of the bright furrowed slope is a plain lined with houses. 



350 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Nearly a century later the lofty-souled Mairgret O' Carroll, 
princess of Offaly, presided over another such gathering. "She was 
the only woman," narrate the Annalists, "that made the most of re- 
pairing the highways and creating bridges, churches and Mass 
books, and of all manner of things profitable to serve God and her 
soul, and, while the world stands, her many gifts to the Irish and 
Scottish nations shall never be numbered." 

"It is she," runs the ancient account, "that twice in one year pro- 
claimed to and commonly invited (i.e., in the dark days of the year, 
to wit on the feast day of Da Sinchell — 26th March — in Killachy) all 
persons, both Irish and Scottish, to two general feasts of bestowing 
both meat and moneys, with all manner of gifts, whereunto gathered 
to receive the gifts the matter of 2,700 persons, besides gamesters 
and poor men, as it was recorded in a Roll to that purpose, and that 
accompt was made thus, ut vidimus — viz., the chief kins of each 
family of the learned Irish was by Gilla-na-naemh MacEgan's hand, 
the chief judge to O'Conor, written in the roll, and his adherents 
and kinsmen, so that the aforesaid number of 2,700 was listed in 
that Roll with the Arts of Dan, or poetry. Music and Antiquity. 
And Maelin G'Maelconry, one of the chief learned of Connacht, 
was the first written in that Roll, and first paid and dieted, or set 
to supper, and those of his name after him and so forth, every one 
as he was paid he was written in that Roll, for fear of mistake, and 
set down to eat afterwards. And Margaret, on the steps of the 
great church of Da Sinchell, clad in cloth of gold, her dearest friends 
about her, her clergy and Judges too. Calvagh (her husband) him- 
self on horseback by the Church's outward side, to the end that all 
things might be done orderly, and each one served successively. And 
first of all she gave two chalices of gold as offerings that day on the 
Altar to God Almighty, and she also caused to nurse or foster two 
young orphans. But so it was, we never saw nor heard neither the 
like of that day nor comparable to its glory and solace. And she gave 

"O'Kelly's castle, as it were, a capital letter, a star-like mass of stone, its outer 
smoothness like vellum — a castle which was the standard of a mighty chieftain ; 
bright is the stone thereof, ruddy its colour. The work is a triumph of art. There 
is much artistic iron-work upon the shining timber. On the smooth part of each 
brown oaken beam workmen are carving animal figures. 

"The bardic companies of pheasant-meadowed Fola (Ireland) and those of 
Scotland — a distant journey — will be acquainted with one another after arriving in 
O'Kelly's lofty stone castle. 

"Herein will come the seven grades who form the shape of genuine poetrj'; 
the seven true orders of poets. . . . 

"Men coming to the son of Donnchadh from the north no less from the south, 
an assembly of scholars : a billeting from west and east. ... 

"There will be jurists of weighty decisions, wizards; the writers of Ireland, 
those who compose the battle rolls, will be in his dwelling. 

"The musicians of Ireland — vast the flock — the followers of every craft in 
general, the llood of companies side by side — the tryst of all is to one house." 



LEARNING IN MEDIAEVAL IRELAND 351 

the second inviting (1443) proclamation (to every one that came 
not that day) on the feast day of the Assumption of our Blessed 
Lady Mary in harvest, at or in the Rath-Imayn, and so we have 
been informed that that second day in Rath-Imayn was nothing in- 
ferior to the first day." 

In state-craft and in peace-making she was equally distinguished. 
Her sanctity became proverbial. Like all Irish women of noble 
repute she led the men folk with the subtle liens of purity and of 
prayer — led them so surely and so unobtrusively that they believed 
they went forward of their own free will. She announced her in- 
tention of visiting the shrine of St. James of Campostella in fair 
Spain and forthwith a big gathering of warriors, hardened war- 
dogs in holy Ireland's cause, led by MacGeoghagan, wished to ac- 
company her (1445). They went together. The flood of Irish 
pilgrims to their own Saints' shrines as well as to the Holy Land, to 
Rome, to St. James of Campostella, to the tomb of Thomas a 
Becket at Canterbury, went on unceasingly through the Middle 
Ages. These pilgrimages need a modern historian — the material is 
by no means scanty. When Mairgret paid the debt of mortality 
(1451) the Annalists wrote: "A gracious year this year was, 
though the glory and solace of the Irish was set but the glory of 
heaven was amplified and extolled therein." "The best woman of 
her time in Ireland" — such was the Irish verdict on this lofty and 
magnanimous soul. "God's blessing, the blessing of all saints and 
every other blessing from Jerusalem to Inis Gluair be on her going 
to Heaven, and blessed be he that will read and hear this for bless- 
ing her soul." 

Her daughter Finola — "the most beautiful and stately, the most 
renowned and illustrious of her time, her own mother alone ex- 
cepted," blessed with "the blessing of guests and strangers, of poets 
and philosophers" — married O'Donnell, Lord of Tir-Chonnail. 
When O'Neill, aided by MacDonnell and his gaU-oglach, invaded 
her territory, she "after the fashion of the strong-hearted and in- 
dependent women of Ireland," met them at Inishowen, and "made 
peace without leave from O'Donnell." Finola, "the fairest and 
most famous woman in Ireland beside her own mother," after the 
death of O'Donnell in an English prison, married the golden-haired 
Hugh O'Neill, "who was thought to be King of Ireland," "the most 
renowned, hospitable and valorous of the princes of his time, and 
who had planted more of the English in despite of them than any 
other man of his day." He died on Spy-Wednesday (1444) "and 
we never heard since Christ was betrayed on such a day, of a better 



352 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

man." Three years later Finola, "renouncing all worldly vanity, 
betook herself into the austere devout life in the monastery of Kil- 
leigh; and the blessing of guests and strangers, and poor and rich, 
and both of poet-philosophers and archi-poet-philosophers be on her 
in that life." 

In history Ireland's fame stands high. She was justly styled a 
"Nation of Annalists." Each sept, each province, had its own 
genealogist and chronicler whose business it was to record the deeds 
of the clan and its princes, and the deaths of its leading personages, 
lay and ecclesiastical. Truth and accuracy were regarded as of 
paramount importance. "To conceal the Truth of History," ran 
one saying, "is the blackest of infamies." The scribes travelled 
throughout the whole country to verify their references and their 
facts. The Philosophy of History was unknown in these ages. 
Many of the entries In the Annals are aggravatingly brief and bald. 
But as the poets celebrated in ample verse the fame and exploits of 
the popular heroes and heroines, the chronicler must have believed 
that brevity was the soul of discretion. The course of study the 
aspiring recorders underwent was long, arduous and specialised. 
They were trained in the bardic schools or under some well-known 
tutor. They handed on from age to age the traditions of their sept. 
The office of scribe and genealogist was usually continued in certain 
families, the son succeeding his father, as a matter of course. The 
Annalists were held in the highest esteem, ranking next to the head 
of the clan; they fed at his table and were supported by his bounty. 
No important public business was conducted without their presence 
and their directing influence. The greater portion of the existing 
annals have been the resultant of the Revival of the fourteenth and 
fifteenth centuries. 



CHAPTER XL 

THE GERALDINES 

The history of the Gaelicised FItzgeralds (the Geraldines) is in a 
sense, the history of the fortunes of Southern Ireland for an ex- 
tensive period. The poet says, "They channelled deep old Ire- 
land's heart by constancy and worth." ^ In Desmond, South Mun- 
ster, and the lands adjoining, they ruled as absolute monarchs over a 
hundred miles of territory. 

"They made barons and knights," records Sir John Davies, "did 
exercise high justice on all points within their territories; erected 
courts for criminal and civil cases, and for their revenues, in the same 
form as the King's courts were established at Dublin; made their 
own judges, seneschals, sheriffs, coroners and escheators; so the King's 
writ did not run in those counties. , . . These great undertakers 
were not tied to any form of planatation, but all was left to their 

1 While our scholarly contributor, "Sean Ghall," is permitted to chaunt the 
paean of the very brave Geraldines in these pages, it is at the same time proper to 
remind readers that though they were with fair thoroughness Gaelicised (both in 
manners and in blood) these usurpers always retained, in their subconsciousness, 
memory of the fact that it was England who had placed them in the seat of the 
displaced Gael. And so long as England properly respected their sovereign rights 
in their dominion — which should not be theirs — they were in turn willing to respect 
England's suzerainty over Ireland in general — and even act as her Deputies. 
It is true that, openly or secretly, they hated England with a holy hate — England 
and the later English. And they hated English tryanny to the extent of becom- 
ing chronic rebels against England — even when they were nominally serving her. 
It was their hatred of England, and resentment of English interference, rather than 
the higher principle of Ireland's nationality, that kept them in rebellion. 

True, the real Irish chieftains had, at times, diplomatically pretended to re- 
sign the principle of Irish nationality; but with them it was always pretence — 
shameful pretence to be sure. The principle, for all that, was kept warm in their 
hearts — and as soon as occasion presented itself, blossomed vigorously forth again. 

The Geraldines were the cream of the scan-Ghall. They were as good as could 
be expected. But no better. When O'Neill was marching to Kinsale he asked 
who owned a castle that took his attention in passing — and when told that the 
owner's name was Barry, he heartily cursed him. "But," interrupted his informant, 
"he's a Catholic whose family has been here four hundred years." "No matter," 
retorted O'Neill, "I hate the robber as though he came yesterday." And indeed till 
O'Neill's day (and later) there was far more than a grain of reason behind the 
exasperation of the GaeL It was not till newer usurpers robbed them of that 
which they themselves had usurped that the sean-Ghall became flawlessly Irish — 
S. M. 

353 



354 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

discretion and pleasure, and although they builded castles and made 
freeholders, yet there were no tenures or services reserved to the 
Crown, but the lords drew all respect and dependency of the com- 
mon people unto themselves." 

The Geraldines of Kildare held the entire county of Kildare, 
with parts of Meath, Dublin, and Carlow, while their castles 
stretched beyond Strangford Lough on the coast of Down, to Adare, 
a few miles from the town of Limerick. They had their own fleet 
to patrol the seas. Intermarriages with the great houses in England 
and with Norman and Gaelic families in Ireland were, at first, a 
settled part of Geraldlne policy. 

When they tasted of the pure milk of Gaelicism they never for- 
got its savour, so they became kindly Irish of the Irish, root and 
branch. Irish culture refined the Normans. There were no 
scholars, no poets or authors, among the first invaders. Yet when 
Jenico Savage, the descendant of the warrior who preferred "a 
castle of bones to a castle of stones" died (1374), the Annalists 
lamented that the learned of Ireland "were left an orphan by his 
death." The higher refinement of native civilisation altered the 
Normans' very nature. Mrs. J. R. Green says: 

"There remains a token of how the lords of Athenry had thrown 
themselves into Irish life, in the shrine made by Thomas de Birming- 
ham (1374) for St. Patrick's tooth, the most venerated relic in 
Connacht — a shrine of silver, decorated with raised figures in sil- 
ver and settings of crystals, coloured glass, and amber with spiral 
and interlaced work of Celtic art. Nugents and Cusacks and Eng- 
lishes, and other foreign names, were entered on the roll of Irish 
poets. In the ardour of Irish studies a Fitzgerald, even a Butler, 
was not behind a MacCarthy or an O'Sullivan. But it is to the 
Geraldines we must look for the highest union of the culture of 
(Norman) England and Ireland. By a fine custom the Irish chiefs, 
'heroes who reject not men of learning,' were in their own houses 
'the sheltering tree of the learned,* and of the whole countryside. 
When a noble made a set feast or 'ushering' there flocked to it all 
the retainers and many a visitor, the mighty and the needy — a gay 
and free democracy of hearers and critics, with 'a welcom.e for every 
first-rate and free-hearted man that is refined and intelligent, affable 
and hilarious.* " 

The Geraldines afford the most numerous Instances of mere men 
of blood, apostles of the sword, turning, under the influence of 
Gaeldom, into gentle sages and wise scholars. Thus, Gerald the 
Rhymer," as his subjects named him, fourth Earl of Desmond 



THE GERALDINES 355 

(1359-98), was known as "the Poet." His learning was so deep 
and his acquirements so wide, that he was regarded as a magician. 
His son, James, was fostered and reared by the O'Briens of 
Thomond, the Statute of Kilkenny notwithstanding. This Fitz- 
gerald is described as a nobleman of wonderful bounty, mirth, 
cheerfulness in conversation, charitable in his deeds, easy of access, 
a witty and ingenious composer of Irish poetry, a learned and pro- 
found chronicler. He excelled all the Enghsh and many of the 
Irish in the knowledge of the Irish language, poetry and history, 
and other learning. This Earl lived long in Irish legendary lore. 
Once in every seven years he is said to revisit his Castle of Gur, 
near Limerick. 

The eighth Earl of Desmond was the flower of the Southern 
Geraldine stock. The Irish people have taken this Thomas Fitz- 
gerald to their hearts, and enshrined him there as a "Martyr of 
Christ." He was the first of a long and fine line of Sean Ghalls to 
be martyred in the cause of Irish freedom. He was an affable, 
eloquent, hospitable man; kind and munificent to the poets and anti- 
quaries of the Irish race. "Educate that you may be free." Acting 
on this maxim Earl Thomas founded the famous College of St. 
Mary at Youghal (1464). The foreigners had destroyed the 
glorious University of Armagh (i 133-1202) with its 3,000 scholars 
and its famed tutors, presided over by Florence O'Gorman, who 
spent over a generation in acquiring knowledge in the universities 
of France and England. Armagh had been regarded as the Na- 
tional University for all the "Irish and Scots," and Rury O'Conor, 
the High King of Ireland, had given to it the first (1169) an- 
nual grant to maintain professors for the whole of the Irish race 
— in Scotland as well as Ireland. Thomas of Desmond tried to re- 
establish a National University, and for that purpose had an Act of 
Parliament passed at Drogheda (1466). By precept and by prac- 
tice he had endeavoured to unify the two races in Ireland. He was 
a promoter and a patron of trade and commerce between Ireland 
and the Continent. The English hated him for such fruitful and 
healing activities — "Enormities" they called them. His marriage 
with an Irish lady, in despite of the Statute of Kilkenny, was a 
crowning infamy. "Who dare say to Geraldine, 'Thy Irish wife 
discard'?" For Thomas Desmond, when he was murdered in 
Drogheda by the Earl of Worcester, afterwards known as "The 
Butcher," all Ireland went into the deepest mourning.- 

2 For his cultured daughter Katherine, wife of MacCarthy Reagh (1450-1500), 
the famous Book of Lismore was made from the now lost Book of Monasterboice. 



356 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Gerald, the eighth Earl of Kildare (1477-15 13), was named by 
Ireland "Gerait Mor" — Gerald the Great. He had the fine stature, 
the manly beauty and goodly presence of his race; his liberality and 
his merciful deeds passed current as household words. He was a 
man of strict piety. His mild just government drew the hearts of 
his people to him in passionate devotedness. During the fifty years 
which preceded the Reformation, the office of Lord Deputy of Ire- 
land, was filled, with a few broken intervals, by this Fitzgerald and 
by his son. They pursued a National policy and so incurred the 
hatred of the permanent English officials. 

By liens of blood-relationship he obtained great influence 
amongst the great Irish houses. Old and New. So powerful had he 
become that he retained the deputy-governorship of Ireland in 
despite of King Edward IV and his nominee. 

He ruled it wisely and justly. A knight he was in valour — 
princely and religious in his word and judgments. His daughters, 
Eleanor and Margaret, were unquestionably two of the most re- 
markable women of their age and country. In vain endeavour to 
join in amity the rival houses of Kildare and Ormond (Geraldine 
and Butler) the Earl married Margaret to Piers Butler, Earl of 
Ormond. She founded the famous school of Kilkenny. Ormond 
was ably seconded by her in his efforts to promote more advanced 
methods of agriculture. Whilst Sir Piers is forgotten, "Magheen" 
or "Little Margaret" Fitzgerald's deeds are recounted beside the 
fire of many a peasant's cot in the Kilkenny of to-day. 

Gerait Og, "Gerald the Younger," ninth Earl of Kildare ( 1487- 
1534), although educated in England was even more Irish than 
his father. He continued the policy of intermarriage with the 
Irish, and so consolidated the power of his house. Maynooth, 
under him, was one of the richest earls' houses of that time. "His 
whole policy was union in his county, and Ireland for the Irish." 
He was first appointed Lord Deputy by his cousin, Henry VIII, in 
1 5 13. After seven years' rule he was removed, charged by the 
English with "seditious practices, conspiracies, and subtle drifts." 
The people were gladdened when a few years later he re-assumed 
the post. 

His cousin, the Earl of Desmond, had entered into a solemn 
league and covenant with Francis I, King of France (1523), to 
drive the English out of Ireland, whilst Scotland was to render 
assistance to the cause by invading England. But the heart of the 
leader of the Scottish army, the Duke of Albany, failed him at the 
last moment and the gallant Scots dejectedly turned homewards 
(20th May, 1525). All Ireland's hopes were again shattered. 



THE GERALDINES 357 

Klldare was summoned (1526) to England by Cardinal Wolsey to 
answer the charge of complicity in the plot. His brilliant wit, subtle 
brain and eloquent tongue alone saved his head from the block. 
Wolsey denounced Kildare as a traitor. In his six years' deten- 
tion in the Tower of London, Kildare's Irish friends convinced 
Henry VIII that Gerald's release was the most politic course, 
for the moment. So he was re-instated (1532). Henry's plans 
for the pulling down of the House of Kildare and the extermina- 
tion of the Desmonds were not yet ripe. So, until his final im- 
prisonment and death, Gerald Og continued to rule as a God- 
fearing, just, wise man. When he took the ordnance from the 
royal castles and placed them in his own it was a portent to the 
country that he had secretly thrown in his lot with Desmond, who 
had not given up the hope of obtaining French, Scottish and Spanish 
aid. He was of a deep piety. His confidence in the goodness and 
mercy of God was unbounded. As a patron of learning he endowed 
a college on the lands assigned by his father for that purpose. This 
building was erected in 15 18 "in a most beautiful form," It was 
called "The College of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Maynooth." 
It was razed with the ground when the beneficent Geraldine's rule 
was ended (1538). O'Mulconry was his ollav, "man full of the 
grace of God and of learning." Gerald had "The Red Book of 
Kildare," now In the British Museum, compiled for him. Philip 
Flattesbury, his secretary, likewise drew up "divers chronicles of 
Ireland." He possessed an excellent library of Latin, Irish, French 
and English books — 122 in all. Almost all the classics were In- 
cluded in this collection, which would compare favourably with the 
finest private library in any English nobleman's castle. Kildare was 
a man of culture, and was well read not only in the ancients but also 
in the literature of his day. His fame was European. "His 
hospitality is to this day rather of each man commended, than of 
any man followed." 

Such a man's doom was certain. The Dublin Castle officials 
soon made up a bill of charges against his Irish rule, and Kildare 
found himself back in the Tower of London for the last time 

(1534)- 

Before his departure from Dublin he appointed as vice-Deputy 

his son, a boy of twenty, the famous Silken Thomas. Disregarding 
his father's advice to be guided by his elders, young Thomas fell 
an easy prey to the veteran English intriguers of Dublin Castle, 
who had been secretly mining the foundations of the House of Kil- 
dare for generations. A forged letter was shown round in oflScIal 
circles in Dublin alleging that the Earl's neck "was already cut 



358 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

shorter" in the Tower of London, "as his issue presently should 
be." Lord Thomas, "rash and headlong and assuming himself that 
the knot of all Ireland was twisted under his girdle," having con- 
sulted with the young bloods, inopportunely raised the standard of 
revolt — against the entreaties of all the wisest heads. His enemies 
rejoiced; his well-wishers were in despair. On nth June, 1534, 
he rode through Dublin, attended by a guard of 140 horsemen In 
coats of mail, with silken fringes on their helmets, on which account 
he became known as "Silken Thomas." On reaching St. Mary's 
Abbey where the Council of State was assembled, his bard chaunt- 
ing the ancient glories of the Geraldlnes adding fuel to his ardour, 
Thomas flung the Sword of State "the English churls among." 
"This sword," he declared, "was already bathed in Geraldlne blood 
and now newly whetted in hope of a further destruction. I am 
none of Henry's Deputy. I am his foe. I have more mind to con- 
quer than to govern, to meet him in the field than to serve him in 
office." 

At first Lord Thornas swept all before him. Then England 
poured troops lavishly Into Ireland — accompanied by the new in- 
vention, the cannon, which proved the young leader's undoing. 

The impetuous valour of Geraldlne and his skilful leadership 
won many battles. The fall of Maynooth Castle, the mightiest 
stronghold In the land, after ten days' battering with "great guns," 
was heard throughout Ireland. "Fooboon on the foreign grey 
gun" cursed the Irish. It was a portent that Silken Thomas's 
victories would avail him nothing. The eagerly awaited French 
army arrived not. After several reverses the Iron tongue of the 
cannon told him further resistance was useless. He submitted and 
was sent to the Tower of London — where his father had already 
died of a broken heart, on learning of Thomas's Insurrection. Here 
the young "rebel" was treated with the utmost cruelty. Finally, he 
was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn (1537). With him 
perished his five uncles, the half-brothers of his father, and the 
near kinsmen of Henry VIII. Three of these nobles, gentle, 
scholarly men, had failed to aid the rebellion. The other two 
having actually helped to suppress it, were, in requital of their serv- 
ice to England's crown, seized at a banquet to which they had been 
invited by the English Lord Deputy. But the troublesome house 
of Kildare must be wiped out for good. Two children, however, 
escaped from the butchery. The blotting out of the very name, 
the uprooting of the seed of the Leinster Geraldlnes, became the 
policy of the subsequent three years. Whilst Gerald, a boy of 12 
years, remained free, the "extirpation" of the race was incomplete. 



THE GERALDINES 359 

Lady Eleanor Fitzgerald, widow of MacCarthy Reagh, and 
aunt of the orphan Gerald, had learnt with grief and horror of the 
six outraged corpses of her kinsmen at Tyburn. She had seen the 
deeds of the English soldiers and officials in the Geraldine country 
who came to wean the people, so they said, "from the inordinate 
tyranny of their Irish lords" and "to teach them the sweets of civil 
English order." She had heard the wail of the ravished maidens, 
of the erstwhile gentlefolk lamenting beside heaps of ruins, once 
stately dwellinghouses ; she saw the charred harvest fields, the 
"slaughter heaps" of youth and age. The churches and the schools, 
the abodes of the men of culture and refinement, had gone the way 
of the cot of the peasant. Such "sweets" were gall and wormwood 
to her compassionate soul. The Act of Parliament ( 1537) decreed 
all the Gerakiine countries to be forfeited to the Crown. Her 
nephew Gerald was being nursed in illness by his sister, Lady Mary 
O'Conor, wife of the chieftain of Offaly, whilst the English people 
held the confident belief that the House of Kildare had ceased to 
be. Through this Lady Eleanor's amazing energy, dauntless 
courage, and exquisite tact, all the great families were united in a 
vast confederacy against the English government. Everywhere lo- 
cal feuds and personal enmities were sacrificed on the altar of Na- 
tionality. All Ireland, Old and New, Gael and Sean Ghall, took 
the boy under its protection. In spite of all political divisions and 
tribal distrusts, Ireland was essentially a nation to the seventeenth 
century : one in soul and mind, though not in body — one in language 
and In literature, one in manners and customs, one in religion and 
in'splrltual feeling, one in the nobler and more gentle arts of human 
fellowship, rooted in the soil of sufferings, kindred, fosterage, 
marriage and death. ^ 



_ 3 The only family of the "Old Foreigners" the Anglo-French-Norman, to be 
artificially kept outside the influence of GaeHcism, was the Butlers of the House 
of Ormond. The Butlers had not become Gaelicised, because for nearly two hun- 
dred years its wards were minors, and so reared and trained by the Kings of 
England as Englishmen. Their policy and outlook was anti-Irish. But James 
Butler, the ninth Earl, broke away from the traditional family policy. He, the 
son of "Magheen" Fitzgerald, the renowned Countess of Ormond, could not but 
regard Ireland as his first love. The pervading spirit of a common Irish life per- 
vaded him as it had filled all the land outside official Dublin. Though the de- 
struction of the rival House of Kildare added enormously to the Ormond estates, 
yet Butler was horrified at the Tyburn butchery. Hardened soldier though he was, 
Ormond played the woman openly, "tears pouring down his cheeks" when he pic- 
tured the six stark Geraldine corpses. Intermarriage with the Powers, the O'Briens, 
and the MacGillapatricks, established the Butlers power. By an alliance with a 
daughter of James, eleventh Earl of Desmond, James Butler united the southern 
Geraldines to his interests. This brought down upon him the vengeance of Eng- 
land whose policy was to divide and conquer. On the death of Desmond, Ormond 
claimed the Earldom. The union of the two families would have made Butler 
ruler of almost the whole of Southern Ireland. Henry VIII took up Ormond's 
challenge. At a supper given at Limehouse, London, the whole of Lord Butler's 



36o THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Through her marriage with the scholarly author, wise politician 
and stout warrior, Manus O'Donnell, Lady Eleanor healed an age- 
long animosity between Tir-Eoghan and Tir-Chonaill. The news 
caused consternation at Dublin Castle and so in England. "Never 
was I in despair of Ireland until now," exclaimed the Lord Deputy; 
another official added that their trust was "by the aid of the North 
of Ireland and of Scotland" to make war. O'Neill and O'Donnell 
"by the procurement of the said Eleanor" had taken a solemn oath 
to take one part with the said Gerald against the Englishry 
(1538). For security the boy was conveyed to France, via the 
territory of O'Donnell. And, savage at being robbed of his 
precious prey, Henry VIII sent Lord Leonard Grey, his Deputy of 
Ireland, to the scaffold, for not having effected Gerald's capture. 

Lady Eleanor unified the whole country. The French king and 
the Emperor Charles V promised their aid, once agai-n, and Scot- 
land's weight was to turn the balance in Ireland's favour. O'Neill 
was to be proclaimed High King at Tara. Once again foreign aid 
was illusory. The Earl of Desmond began by the invasion of the 
English districts of Tipperary; and the Northern chieftains "in- 
vaded the Pale" (1539). Against the field of the new English 
artillery, "the great grey guns," they had no adequate defence, so 
Irish hopes were once more futile. 

But hope never yet died in the Irish breast. The name of the 
exiled young Gerald Fitzgerald became a source of inspiration and 
of hope to his countrymen at home. He had had a royal recep- 
tion in France, in the Lowlands, in Italy and was acclaimed "King 
of Ireland" by the people who denounced Henry VIII as a mere 
usurper. He was followed by cheering crowds whenever he ap- 
peared in public. Kings and princes, the Emperor Charles, and 
the Pope vied with one another in honouring and aiding him. 
In Italy the Bishop of Verona and of Mantua provided him with 
the best education the Peninsula afforded. The Duke of Milan 
pensioned him. Cosmo de Medici pensioned him. In the service 
of the Knights of Malta he fought the Turks. He afterwards 
became Master of the Horse to the Grand Duke of Tuscany. 

France concluded to use Gerald in uniting Scotland and Ire- 
land. Lady Eleanor Fitzgerald had guaranteed the support of the 
MacCarthys' land of Carbery; the O'Neills and O'Donnells "who 
had the whole North hanging on their sleeves," would give the 

retinue, fift)', sickened, •seventeen dying of the poison. The Earl himself was car- 
ried to Ely House, Holborn, where he succumbed after some days' suffering. Irish 
writers blame Henry and his Deputy for this atrocity. Others accuse the Earl 
of Northumberland, "a rare poisoner" (1550). 



THE GERALDINES . 361 

French a glad welcome. Irish ambassadors were passing to and 
fro from the lands of the Gael and Sean Ghall to the French King. 
The English believed that there would be a universal rising as soon 
as the French and Gerald made their appearance. Irish monks and 
friars carried the fiery cross of revolt from Malin Head to Cape 
Clear — from North to South. A large French fleet had assembled 
at Brest, and 15,000 veteran soldiers were ready to embark. 

But, at the last moment, the patching up of the quarrel between 
France and the Empire led to a change of plans. The French went 
direct to Scotland, from thence intending to invade Ireland. The 
English, wishing the beautiful and fascinating child, afterwards 
the world-famed Mary Queen of Scots, as a wife for Edward VI, to 
unite the two countries, sent an army to enforce their demand. The 
armies of Scotland and England met at Pinkie (loth Sept., 1547). 
The defeat of the Scots and their French and Irish allies was the 
result of the contest. 

In Ireland, however, the O'Donnells and 15,000 Scots kept the 
flame alight in the North. The Geraldines and the O'Conors were 
ravaging the Enghsh Pale. The Earl of Desmond had all ready to 
join the oft-expected French. It was at this juncture that French 
opinion favoured the marriage of Gerald Fitzgerald with Mary 
of Scots. English agents in Scotland reported that when the Ger- 
aldine landed at Dumbarton "Gerald of Kildare should marry the 
Scottish queen and array all Ireland in their party against England." 
But the death of Francis I and the accession of Henry II, who 
wished Mary for his own son, altered all these plans. Scotland 
and Ireland found themselves but pawns on the Continental chess- 
board. Realising that all hope of freeing Ireland by the help of 
foreign princes was but as idle wind, Gerald, at the instance of his 
aunt, Lady Eleanor, made his submission to the English Queen and 
was restored to a portion of his lands and his title "legitimatised" 

(1554)- 

Though, even "legitimatised" he settled down to become the 
willing centre of endless, — and alas! fruitless — "rebellious" in- 
trigue. The Irish chieftains, the Scots, the French, and the Spanish, 
plotted for Ireland's freeing — ever with the young Geraldine as 
the hero around whom the hosts should rally. 



CHAPTER XLI 

HENRY VIII'S POLICIES 

From the beginning of his reign (15 15) Henry VIII undertook 
to destroy the basis of Irish resistance. With this object in view he 
issued "most secret" instructions to his officials to capture our trade 
and commerce, by every subtle device. All the laws against Irish 
civilisation, against marriage, fosterage and gosslpred, against the 
use of native literature and its language, against every phase and 
aspect of National life, were re-enacted. By a Parliament (May 
1 536)" composed of English colonists only, and convened by fraud, 
corruption, and terror, Henry was acknowledged as Head of 
Church and State; and the Catholic religion, with its ritual and 
teachings,- declared null and void, "corrupt for ever." Five years 
later the same body proclaimed Henry "King of Ireland." 

"Irishmen," wrote one of the would-be exterminators in the 
light of sad later experience, "will never be conquered by war. They 
can suffer so much hardness to lie in the field, to live on roots and 
water continually, and be so light, ever at their advantage to flee 
or fight; so that a great army were but a charge in vain and would 
make victuals dear. . . . The Irishmen have pregnant subtle 
wits, eloquent and marvellous natural in comynaunce. They must 
be Instructed that the King intendeth not to exile, banish, or destroy 
them, but would be content that every one of them should enjoy 
his possessions taking* the same of the king . . . and become his 
true subjects, obedient to his laws, forsaking their Irish laws, habits 
and customs, setting their children to learn English" (Cowley's 
Plan for the Reformation of Ireland, 1541 STATE PAPERS). 

The Lord Deputy, St. Leger, preached and acted on this Gospel. 
The unfortunate result was the submission of O'Neill, O'Donnell, 
O'Brien, the MacCarthy, the Burkes, and all the rules of the 
Irish, Old and New. They went through the form of acknowl- 
edging Henry as King of Ireland, as Head of Church and State In 
Ireland, and promised to substitute English for Brehon law, and 
English manners, and customs for Irish. "They have turned, and 
sad Is the deed, their back to the inheritance of their fathers." 

362 



HENRY VlirS POLICIES 363 

Yet in spite of ''doing knee-homage, they would not get from the 
King of England for Ireland a respite from misery. There is not 
one of them in the shape of a man in Ireland at this time. O mis- 
guided, withered host, say henceforth nothing but Fooboon !" The 
people, faithful to Ireland in w(Je as in weal, resented, lamented, 
and even cursed their "diplomatic" chiefs. 

The fate and fortunes of any one of the compromisers is typical 
of all. Take'O'Neill for example. When Con O'Neill, Lord of 
Tir-Eoghan, submitted to Henry VIII at Greenwich (24th Sept., 
1542), he renounced the title "The O'Neill," and was created Earl 
of Tyrone instead. A sturdy adventurer "called an O'Neill," 
Mathew Kelly, the son of a Dundalk blacksmith, selected by the 
English Government to disintegrate Tir-Eoghan, received the^itle 
of Baron of Dungannon, and so Con's successor by feudal law. 
O'Neill then acknowledged Henry as Head of Church and State, 
and undertook to substitute English for Irish civilisation. All the 
legal incidents of feudalism were to replace those of the Brehon 
law. The number of his soldiers was to be determined by the Lord 
Deputy, whom he was to accompany in all warlike expeditions 
against "rebels." A mansion and lands in the Pale were to be 
bestowed upon him, when he attended the English Parliament in 
Dublin. Though "he received the mocks of all men" for his con- 
version to Anglicisation he tried to fulfil his side of the shameful 
bargain. When Henry II of France and the Sovereign of 
Scotland sent letters and ambassadors to O'Neill inviting him to 
join the Catholic League against England, he forwarded the letters 
to London as a proof of his loyalty. Yet England had no intention 
of allowing any Irish lord to rule his people as his peers in England 
ruled theirs. Slowly it dawned on the victimised Con that her real 
aim was the seizure of his lands and the extermination of his people. 
Nicholas Bagenal, who had fled from justice for man-killing in 
England, was appointed Marshal of the North. He began an in- 
discriminate slaughter of O'Neill's subjects, burning even the very 
grass^ killing every living thing on four legs, destroying habitations 
and churches. The recreant Con's letters of protest against such 
barbarity to England's King and the Privy Council, were returned 
unopened or disregarded. The "Baron of Dungannon" was main- 
tained against him — "borne up by the chin" by the English Govern- 
ment. Daring to arrest one of the ravishers of his country, he was 
imprisoned in Dublin by the Governor till he was enforced to deliver 
the plunderer (1550). When he performed his duty of visiting 
the Deputy in the Pale he was told by that humane dignitary were 
it not that he was old he would have off his head and see his blood 



364 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

poured in a basin. After a victory to which O'Neill's troops con- 
tributed, he provided a banquet for his companion in arms, the 
Lord Deputy, the latter, "leaving the banquet unconsumed for 
haste," at Armagh "did imprison the said Earl O'Neill and took 
him prisoner to Dublin, and sent a garrison to Armagh and to Dun- 
gannon, his chief manor, since which time the country was im- 
poverished" (1552). Vainly did he try to obtain a reason for this 
treatment. Con's letters describing the horrors his people endured 
by the acts of English soldiery, whilst he was "a true and faithful 
subject to the King's Majesty" make bitter reading. 

After seventeen years as an English Earl Con lay on his dying 
bed, a broken, dispirited man, despised by his subjects. He called 
his people to him and pronounced malediction on all his descendants 
who should trust in English faith or give credence to English 
promises. He cursed those who would speak the English tongue, 
"fo-r language bred confusion;" who built houses after the English 
fashion, "to be beaten out by the hawk;" who grew corn in the 
open, unfortified country, "to nourish the ravishers and destroyers." 

Yet he suffered no more than any other of the confiding 
chieftains who had put their trust in English faith, in its policy of 
^'Conciliation." 

Throughout disillusioned Ireland the fighting men deserted the 
English-made lords. They flocked to the standards of the chieftains 
selected in the way their forebears had elected them for more than 
a thousand years. The Penal Laws against Irish Civilisation made 
the people love it the more passionately. 

Another of Henry's devices for the conquest of Ireland was 
the kidnapping of noblemen's sons and having them reared and 
educated in England, hostile to every tradition and instinct of their 
nationality. "Politic practices," said Henry, "would serve till such 
time as the strength of the Irish should be diminished, their leaders 
taken away from them, and division put among themselves so that 
they join not together." A modern historian thus passes judgment 
on Tudor policy: "If there had been any truth or consideration for 
Ireland in the royal compact some hope of compromise and con- 
ciliation might have opened. But the whole scheme was rooted and 
grounded in falsehood, and Ireland had yet to learn how far suffer- 
ings by the quibble and devices of law might exceed the disasters 
of open war. Chiefs could be ensnared one by one in misleading 
contracts, practically void. A false claimant could be put on a 
territory and supported by English soldiers in a civil war, till the 
actual chief was exiled or yielded the land to the King's ownership. 
No chief, true or fahe, had power to give away the people's land, 



HENRY VlirS POLICIES 365 

and the king was face to face with an indignant people, who refused 
to admit an illegal bargain. Then came a march of soldiers over 
the district, hanging, burning, shooting, 'the rebels,' casting the 
peasants out on the hillsides. There was also the way of 'conquest.' 
The whole of the inhabitants were to be exiled, and the countrieis 
made vacant and waste for English peopling: the sovereign's rule 
would be immediate and peremptory over those whom he had thus 
planted by his sole will, and Ireland would be kept in a way un- 
known in England; then 'the King might say Ireland was clearly 
won, and after he would be at little cost and receive great profits, 
and men and money at pleasure.' . . . Henceforth it became a 
fixed policy to 'exterminate and exile the country people of the 
Irishry.' Whether they submitted or not the king was 'to inhabit 
their coiimtry' with English blood." 

Henry hoped to have a royal army of Ireland as "a sword and 
a flay" to his subjects in England and to his enemies abroad. His 
dream seemed to be realised when Earl Con O'Neill and other 
Irish" lords, in the full flush of faith and confidence in English 
justice, sent an army to aid Henry's troops against Francis I, King 
of France — Ireland's best Continental friend — at the siege of 
Boulogne (1544). The false, disillusioned* Irish did not repeat 
this experiment. 

Also, Henry believed he could raise a big revenue out of Ire- 
land's pockets for his sensualities and his political objects. But this 
likewise failed, because his "cormorants and caterpillars" (as one 
of their number happily d&scribed his fellow officials in Dublin 
Castle) were too busy amassing wealth for themselves. 

The introduction of the Protestant Reformation principles 
added sources of fresh outrages, new oppres'sions. In Ireland 
Protestantism was not given a chance to appeal to the pe'ople by 
any ethical, religious, or political ideals. The licentious unpaid 
English soldiery who had to maintain themselves by plunder and 
rapine, were accompanied by incendiari^ who left not a homestead, 
not a blade of corn, standing; these apostles were followed by 
ministers of the Gospel, with hangmen and escheators in their train. 
So, amidst an orgy of slaughters and executions, in which neither 
age nor sex, neither the infirm nor the strong were spared, and of 
burnings, the true teachings of the Prince of Peace were supposed 
to be inculcated. The soul of Ireland, resurrected through the 
crucifixion of her body, became the most devoted daughter of the 
Catholic Church. The destruction of monasteries, churches and 
schools, became a passion. Even the possession of a manuscript on 
any subject whatever incurred the death penalty. Poets and his- 



366 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

torians were put to the sword, and their books and genealogies 
burned, so that no man "might know his own grandfather." All 
Irishmen, Old and New, were to be confounded in the same 
ignorance and abasement, all glories gone and all rights lost. The 
great object of the EngHsh Government was to purge the land of 
Ireland of its rightful sons, to destroy the National tradition, to 
wipe out Gaelic memories, and to begin a new English life. 

Henry's well-defined policies were religiously pursued by his 
successors, Edward and Mary. 

The ministers of his son, Edward VI, intensified the vigour of 
his religious crusade. Religion was to be made sweet to the 
heretical Irish — "with the Bible in one hand, in the other the 
Sword." The English Liturgy in English was to be "rammed 
down the rebels' throats." Edward's sister, "Bloody Mary," who 
at Smithfield set alight the pyre, to burn those who dared to worship 
the God of Truth, the God of Mercy, in a way different from hers, 
in Ireland, amid great rejoicings, restored the Catholic religion. 
Religious bigotry has not — to the credit of the Irish Catholics be 
it proclaimed — ever found favour in Eirinn. Hence it is not sur- 
prising to find history record that the Reformers were nowhere 
persecuted when the long-suffering Irish Church was nov/ restored 
to its own. 

Mary's political policy did not differ from that of her father. 
Her Irish rule was no less merciless than that of her two pred- 
ecessors. Catholic England, Protestant England — both were, to 
Ireland, as one in savage tyranny. 

The O'Conors of Offaly and the O'Mores of Leix having 
dared to defend their lands against the English invaders were out- 
lawed and their countries forfeited to the Crown. A long and 
bloody warfare, conducted with terrible ferocity, was the result. 
"Civil" English people and licentious soldiery were "planted" on 
the O'Conors' and O'Mores' lands; their owners being "rooted 
up by the sword" and burnt out by the torch. This "godly re- 
formation" being achieved, these clan districts were named King's 
and Queen's County in honour of Mary and her Spanish husband. 
King Philip. The remnants of the broken clans were to be allowed 
to inhabit the boglands provided they became English in every 
sense of the word. Even in Ireland there is nothing so heroic, so 
persistent, so indefatigable as the efforts made by these two gallant 
clans to recover their homes and altars. The struggle was main- 
tained for generations. Like storm-beaten birds in crannied nooks 
they emerged at every lull in the National storm and carried fire 
and sword among the "planters." Even to this day O'More and 



HENRY VlirS POLICIES 367 

O'Conor are the principal families In the district, where their 
forefathers ruled as just, munificent princes. 

VOR THE NORMAN PERIOD IN IRISH HISTORY READ IN 
ADDITION TO USUAL IRISH HISTORIES: 

Davies: The Reason Why Ireland was Never Entirely Subdued. 

Richey: Lectures on Irish History. 

Green, Mrs. A. S. : The Making of Ireland and Its Undoing. 

Hull, Eleanor: History of Irish Literature (vol. ii). 

Hyde, Douglas: A Literary History of Ireland. 

Gilbert: History of the Irish Viceroys. 

MacNeill, Eoin: Phases of Irish History'. 



CHAPTER XLII 

SHANE THE PROUD ^ 

Dublin Castle, the seat of English power in Ireland, stands on 
the site of the fortress of Haskulf the Dane. Before its first stone 
root struck, into the ground, while the newly arrived Norman ad- 
venturers held Dublin, Haskulf came sailing back with fifty ships 
manned by men in ringed hauberks, with red painted shields, of 
iron hearts, of iron hands, says the chronicler, to win back his home. 
He was defeated, his men put to the sword, and he, for a brave 

1 SHANE O'NEILL 

On thy wild and windy upland. Tornamona, 

High above the tossing Aloyle, 
Lies in slumber, deep and dreamless now, a warrior 

Weary-worn with battle-toil. 
On his mighty breast the little canna blossoms, 

And the scented bog-bines trail ; 
While the winds from Lurigaiden whisper hush-songs 

Round the bed of Shane O'Neill. 

Time was once, O haughty Warrior, when you slept not 

To the crooning of the wind ; 
There was once a Shane whom daisies could not smother, 

And whom bog-weeds could not bind — 
Once a Shane with death-shafts from his fierce eye flashing, 

With dismay in fist of mail — 
Shane, whose throbbing pulses saner with singing lightning — 

Shane, our Shane, proud Shane O'Neill ! 

Him the hungrj' Sect knew, and the thieving Saxon, 

Traitorous Eircannach as well ; 
For their mailed throats often gurgled in his grasping. 

As he hurled their souls to hell. 
Sassenach, now, and flouting Scot, and Irish traitor. 

Breathe his name and turn not pale. 
Set their heel upon the warrior's breast, nor tremble — 

God ! the breast of Shane O'Neill ! 

Will you never, O our Chieftain, snap the sleep-cords? 

Never rise in thunderous wrath — 
Through the knaves and slaves that bring a blight on Uladh, 

Sweeping far a dread red swath ? 
O'er the surges shout, O you on Tornamona, 

Hark, the soul-shout of the Gael ! 
"Rise, O Chief, and lead us from our bitter bondage — • 

Rise, in God's name, Shane O'Neill." 

— Seumas MacManus. 
368 



SHANE THE PROUD 369 

defiant word, had his old bald head shorn from his shoulders. 

Thus on the site of feasting was now a tradition of blood. The 
new justiciary carried up the v/alls; and by the time the story of 
Ireland reached the sixteenth century the castle was a large quad- 
rangular building with towers, high walls, and strong defences. It 
was fortress, a Parliament House, a Council Chamber, a Prison. 
It was the very heart of English rule in Ireland. That heart had 
been beating there four hundred years and, if an old prophecy is 
true, it had yet to beat three hundred more. Then it would cease. 

In 1567 a gift was brought to a group of gentlemen in the 
Castle's Council Chamber. The bearer was handsomely rewarded 
from the public Treasury, and the gift put in its place. Tarred, 
stuck on a pole thrust horizontally from the north-west gateway, 
it was left there for all DubHn to see. The Lord Deputy hastened 
to write to Elizabeth of England to tell her the good news. For 
that gift had brought her statesmen a step further in the conquest 
of Ireland. 

It was the head of Shane O'Neill, captain and chief of North- 
west Ulster. Shane was a bad man in private life, but a born 
soldier, a sagacious ruler, and a believer in his rights. When Conn, 
the Lame, his father, accepted an English title, and became Baron 
of Dungannon, Shane went into rebellion. On his father's death, 
he slew his half brother, the next baron, and was inaugurated the 
O'Neill. Shane the Proud, LHster called him. He stood across 
England's advance into the province. Wherever he set up his 
tent, the great King-Candle before it, thicker than a man's body, 
shining there in the night, his battle-axe guard at the door, the 
trained soldiers of his territory, the hired Scottish gaIl-oglac]i 
around, victory generally fell to his side. Elizabeth and her Lord 
Deputies tried to cajole him, to deceive him, to defeat him, to 
capture him, to murder him. Then when his soldiers had pierced 
to the Pale, they recognised him as the O'Neill. 

Once Sussex, the Lord Deputy, sent a force into his territory. 
The English general seized Armagh, left men there, gathered spoil, 
and set homeward. 

O'Neill heard, followed, slew the spoilers, and recaptured the 
booty. The Lord Deputy wished to make terms. O'Neill answered 
that he would make no terms till the English soldiers were with- 
drawn from Armagh. The Deputy temporised, applied to Eng- 
land for soldiers, got them, and marched a great army into North- 
east Ulster. But he struck at the air; O'Neill withdrew his men 
into the forests and mountains, and sent an envoy to France to ask 
for six thousand men. 



370 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Then Elizabeth bade her Deputy win him over with promises, 
with offers of friendship. He was won, or appeared to be. She 
invited him to London. So he went, taking his retinue with him, 
being not only chief of Tyrone, but a prince with far descended 
rights. 

London stared. He brought a company of gall-oglach. They 
were picked and selected men "of great and mighty bodies, men 
choosing rather to die than to yield." They wore shirts of mail, 
iron caps, bright coloured trews to the knees, leggings of leather. 
Their arms were swords by their sides, battle-axes in their hands. 
The company being on an embassy of peace, in courtesy to a queen, 
marched with bare heads. An English writer saw them, wondered, 
marvelled with London and the court at their uncivilised mode of 
wearing their hair. Long on their necks it hung; close-cut in 
front above the eyes. And such eyes as must have looked out 
from under the combed unparted glib, proud, wondering, think- 
ing of the spoil, no doubt, that the big foreign city could give. And 
Elizabeth, favourable to all well made men, received their Chief in 
honour, bestowing her friendship and gifts upon him; for which 
friendship and gifts, and the recognition of his Chieftainship, he 
paid her allegiance and promised to drive brave Sorley Boy Mc- 
Donnell and his Scottish soldiers out of Antrim. So they parted, 
Lady paramount, and semi-independent prince. 

But it was not her policy nor the policy of her statesmen to 
let such a man live. He was dangerous as an O'Neill who might 
try to recover full independence, a man also who remembered his 
direct descent from the High Kings of Ireland. He went home, 
the Proud, with what thoughts in his mind who shall say? But he 
had passed his word; remembered his honour; made war on Sorley 
Boy and his Scots, defeated them and captured McDonnell. For 
two years he lived in state, ruling justly. Every day he put aside 
the first dish from his table for the poor. "We serve Christ first," 
he said. Sinner, soldier, chieftain, he was a strong figure in the 
century. 

These great dynastic houses maintained large retinues. Many, 
since the Invasion, had lived and ruled as if no England existed. 
They sent embassies and heralds to one another, proclaimed war or 
peace; collected their tribute. The point of England's sword had 
entered the nation's body, but the wound was scorned or forgotten. 
Each House had its hereditary officials: a marshal of forces; a 
master of the horse; chief doorkeeper; chief butler; superintendent 
of banquets; an immediate guard; keeper of treasure and chess- 
board; keeper of arms and dresses; answerer of challenges from 



SHANE THE PROUD 



371J 



outside territories; avengers of insult; chief steward; keeper of 
hounds; inaugurator and deposer; rearer of horses; carriers of 
wine from harbour to the court; builders and erectors of buildings; 
stewards of rent and tribute; hereditary historians and poets, men 
highly trained in the schools. 

Shane's territory was now supposed to be safe from English 
interference or invasion. He and England's queen were friends. 
Sussex, the Lord Deputy, wrote offering him his sister in marriage 
with a safe conduct to Dublin. His intention was to capture- 
Shane. Later he sent him a present of wine. Elizabeth knew of 
the gift; knew what was in it. 

Shane and his household drank of the wine — and just escaped 
death. The poisoner was unskilled. But Shane knew now for- 
ever with whom he had to deal. It was the second attempt that 
English statesmen had secretly made to assassinate him. There 
is a State paper, a letter from Sussex to Elizabeth in which he tells 
of his efforts to get Shane murdered. 

Shane flung off his allegiance. Allegiance sat on these Irish 
nobles like a red saddle loosely girt. After that draught of wine 
he thought his sword his best security. He won a victory notable 
for its name. Strange poppies lay among the harvest of the slain 
reaped by his gall-oglach. They were three hundred English 
soldiers, not in buff but in scarlet coats. The clansmen counted 
and wondered at the new uniform of their foes. So that battle 
was called the battle of the red coats. 

But hard were the strokes of his enemies — "Queen's" 
O'Donnels, "Queen's" O'Neills, Elizabeth's forces — and the Proud 
was left the choice of submission or an appeal to the Scots mer- 
cenaries. He chose the latter, freed Sorley Boy McDonnell, and 
went to a banquet they gave. To that banquet also went a man 
whom the Lord Deputy had maintained privately in Tyrone when 
he and Shane were in friendship and peace. The spy waited till 
the wine had made men drunk and think of their wrongs. Then 
O'Neill was slain. The spy hastened to Dublin Castle and received 
from Sir Henry Sidney a thousand marks from the public treasury. 
So Shane's head went upon the north-west gate of Dublin. - 

2 Our Irish poet, John Savage, wrote a fine poem entitled "Shane's Head" — in 
which a clansman of Shane standing outside the wall of Dublin Castle is apostro- 
phising the head — from which poem are taken the following stanzas : 

Is it thus, O Shane the haughty ! Shane the valiant ! that we meet — 

Have my eyes been lit by Heaven but to guide me to defeat? 

Have / no chief, or you no clan, to give us both defence? 

Or must I, too, be statued here with thy cold eloquence? 

Thy ghastly head grins scorn upon old Dublin's Castle-tower, 



372 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Thy shaggy hair is wind-tossed, and thy brow seems rough with power ; 
Thy wrathful lips, like sentinels, by foulest treachery stung, 
Look rage upon the world ol wrong, but chain thy fiery tongue. 

That tongue, whose Ulster accent woke the ghast of Colm Cille, 
Whose warrior words fenced round with spears the oaks of Derry Hill; 
Whose reckless tones gave life and death to vassals and to knaves, 
And hunted hordes of Saxons into holy Irish graves. 
The Scotch marauders whitened when his war-cry met their ears. 
And the death-bird, like a vengeance, poised above his stormy spears ; 
Ay, Shane, across the thundering sea, out-chanting it, your tongue 
Flung wild un-Saxon war-whoopings the Saxon Court among. 

Just think, O Shane ! the same moon shines on Lififey as on Foyle, 
And lights the ruthless knaves on both, our kinsmen to despoil ; 
And you the hope, voice, battle-axe, the shield of us and ours, 
A murdered, trunkless, blinding sight above these Dublin towers ! 
Thy face is paler than the moon ; my heart is paler still — - 
My heart? I had no heart — 'twas yours, 'twas yours! to .ceep or kill. 
And you kept it safa for Ireland, Chief — your life, your soul, your pride; 
But they sought it in thy bosom, Shane — with proud O'Neill it died. 



CHAPTER XLIII 

ELIZABETH CONTINUES THE CONQUEST 

The conquest of Ireland had been going on for four centuries. The 
rock against which every attempt to complete it had broken was the 
immemorial laws of Ireland, the Brehon Laws. These bound 
Irishmen within the four seas to one social and legal rule. All at- 
tempts to plant the feudal system in Ireland by England went down 
before them. 

Their land system was the chief evil in the eyes of the invaders. 
The clan owned the land as well as the chief. He had a life interest 
in the chief's portion; but he could not sell the clan-lands or eject 
free owners. This was a hindrance to confiscation. Now, the Irish 
laws were declared barbarous. During four centuries the am- 
bulatory Parhament of the Pale passed laws against it. These 
laws reached just as far as English swords could carry them. The 
Parliament had now not to discuss, but to pass, the commands of 
Her Highness. They were two, to be carried out by all methods. 
Ireland was to be brought completely under her authority, each 
chief's territory admitting English law : and the Protestant religion 
was to be firmly established. These two cardinal commands each 
Lord Deputy was to enforce upon Ireland. 

The time had arrived when the two civilisations stood at last 
fully face to face. The one represented by feudalism — feudalism 
unshackling itself — and the one represented by the Brehon Laws.^ 
The first had long denounced the other as barbarous. Irish dress, 
Irish customs, were the dress and customs of savages.^ England's 

1 Dr. Sigerson says of the early Brehon Laws, "I assert, that, speaking bio- 
logically, such laws could not emanate from any race whose brains have not been 
subject to the quickening influence of education for many generations." 

2 In the first century of the Invasion the vehement Norman-Welsh Archdeacon, 
Giraldus Cambrensis, exclaims, "Verily a wild and inhospitable race ! Yet Nature 
fails not to rear and mould them through infancy and childhood, until in the fulness 
of time she leads each to man's estate conspicuous for a tall and handsome form, 
regular features, and a fresh complexion. But though adorned to the full with 
such natural gifts as these, still the barbarous fashion of their garments, and their 
ignorance, reveal the utter savage. They apparel themselves in small closely fit- 
ting hoods extending over the shoulders and down to the elbow, generally made 

37Z 



374 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

wish, often expressed in the four hundred years, was to civilise Ire- 
land. If that were impossible, then extermination. 

The other objective, besides the Irish laws, was now the religion 
of the people. The Reformation had rolled back from the shores 
of Ireland. To the devout soul of the race it was blasphemy to 
call Henry VIII, or Elizabeth, the Head of the Church. Strong 
measures were now used. Abbeys were suppressed and destroyed; 
churches seized; Protestant ministers supplanted the priests. But 
no real headway was made. The Irish-Norman nobles, the Des- 
monds and others, held to the Catholic Faith; the clans and their 
chiefs did the same. Fiercer measures followed. The Dublin 
Parliament enacted that the lives of priests were forfeited. They 
were to be hanged, cut down when half dead, disembowelled and 
burnt, and their heads impaled in some public place. Any one shel- 
tering a priest was to be hanged, and his lands confiscated. The 
Act only ran where England's arm reached. In free Tirconnel, in 
free Tyrone, in the Desmond country, in the O'Rourke's of Bref- 
finy, In hundreds of places in Ireland it had no effect. Priests min- 
istered to their flocks openly; learned monks wrote in their mon- 
asteries. But here and there the hands reached, struck, and cap- 
tured. It captured the Archbishop of Cashel, played with him 
for a while, as a cat with a mouse, then finding him inflexible tor- 
tured him and put him to death. Other priests were seized and 
tortured and hanged. 

The strongest Norman house in Irish history was the Gerald- 
ines. They must be suppressed. The Ormonds were Castle men, 
guardians of English authority. The Black Earl of Ormond seized 
Gerald, Earl of Desmond, and sent him to London, and Elizabeth 
sent him to the Tower. A little later his brother was seized and 
sent there too. Their cousin, James Fitzmaurice, drew his sword 
to protest against the seizures. "Spirited youths" joined him, and 
held the Desmond country. They won victories; they routed a 
queen's army. Then Elizabeth made peace with Fitzmaurice. And 
she then directed a plot for the treacherous murder of himself, 
his brothers and cousins — which, by discovering in time, he escaped. 

of parti-colour scraps sewn together. Under this instead of a coat they wear a 
gown. Woolen trews complete that attire, being breeches and hose in one, usually 
dyed some tint. The "barbarians" honoured learning. The Leinster prince who 
invited the Normans to Ireland could write, and not only write but quote Ovid. 
Most of the Norman chivalry had to employ clerics to read and write their let- 
ters. We read of banquets and tournaments in other countries where young 
knights showed their prowess in the saddle, their skill with the lance : but we do 
not read of banquets and tournaments given to learned men where the contest was 
not steel against steel, but epic against epic, song against song, harp against harp — 
such as those arranged by Liam O'Kelly and the Lady Mairgret of Offaly. 



ELIZABETH CONTINUES THE CONQUEST 375 

After a time the new Earl had to fly to Spain for safety and 
succour. 

He visited Rome, too, got Italian mercenaries, fourscore 
Spaniards, a promise of more, and returned to Ireland, where he 
vanished out of life in a skirmish. Spain remembered her promise. 
Eight hundred Spaniards landed on the coast of Kerry. They 
fortified themselves on the Golden Island, a rock connected with the 
land by a narrow neck. The Lord Deputy, Gray, hastened to at- 
tack them, and invested the rock by sea and land. But no breech 
was made; the Golden fort was impregnable; winter was approach- 
ing. Gray sent in a flag of truce and offered honourable terms if 
the Spaniards would surrender. The Spanish commander accepted 
the terms, and his men laid down their arms. Then Gray sent in 
his soldiers and massacred seven hundred men. The massacre, 
note well, was directed by Sir Walter Raleigh and an officer named 
Wingfield. 

The Earl and his kinsmen, fighting now for their religion and 
their homes, joined hands with the MacCarthys, the O'Sullivans 
and other Munster chiefs. Carew, a Devonshire knight, claimed 
Desmond territory, and brought an army to seize it and "pacify" 
the province. The Desmond war lasted three more years, alto- 
gether five. When It terminated the "pacification" was continued. 
The Earl, finally defeated, after wandering through woods and bogs 
and in the ravines of the mountains, was at last captured and be- 
headed. At Elizabeth's request his head was sent to London and 
Impaled in an iron cage on the Tower. English adventurers flung 
themselves on the confiscated lands. Sir Walter Raleigh raided over 
the thousands of acres assigned to him, and smoked the "Virginia 
weed" In Youghal after work that would discredit a savage chief. 

There is a gigantic preternatural Figure In Irish Myth; the Red 
Swineherd. Where It passes, where it lays its foot, smoke and 
flames and blood and death and destruction are there. It comes 
out of some antique past, some dread forgotten ritual. The Figure 
of the Myth was upon Munster. Beneath It the little figures of men 
move; the mail-clad gaU-oglach, the swift running Kerne, the red- 
coated, iron-plated soldiers; Irish nobles and chiefs, the marshals 
of England's forces. Away from all these, from Irish and Norman 
chiefs, the MacCarthys, the Desmonds, the O'Sullivans, all the 
princelings, away from the English Deputies, marshals and ad- 
venturers thirsting for Munster soil, away from all those that storm 
across this page of Irish history — glance at the unnamed people. 
Munster was the fairest province in Ireland. It had fifteen hun- 
dred schools. When the Munster wars were ended, when Elizabeth 



376 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

sent her thanks to Sir George Perrln.^ For the "pacification" of 
the province, the schools had been wiped out. The storm of battles 
and skirmishes, of sieges, of intrigues, of massacres is the shifting 
blood-red veil above the homes of thousands. That was no bar- 
barous land where scholars filled the schools, where science and 
the classics were taught; where the pride of youth was stimulated, 
the imagination fired by the Hero-Tales of Ireland. It is a 
psychological fact that the Elizabethan Englishmen, many of them 
brave, gallant and chivalrous, became barbarians in their contact 
with Ireland. The old Greeks explain the reason for the fall. It 
is Pride and Injustice; these things bring moral death. In their 
attempt to conquer Ireland the avenging Furies fell upon them. 

Carew in his Pacata Hibernia writes that English soldiers 
entered an Irish camp, "found none but hurt and sick men, whose 
pains and lives they soon determined." And again that he having 
burnt all the houses and corn and taken great prey diverted his 
forces into another place, "and harrowing the country, killed all 
mankind that were found therein for a terror to those who would 
give relief to runagate traitors." He passed into Arleagh woods 
"where we did the like, not leaving behind us man or beast, corne or 
cattle." The slaughter continued after the war had ended. "Those 
whom the sword could not reach were deliberately given a prey to 
famine." 

"The English nation," says Froude, "was shuddering over the 
atrocities of the Duke of Alva. Yet Alva's bloody sword never 
touched the young, the defenceless. ... Sir Peter Carew has 
been seen murdering women and children and babies that had 
scarcely left the breast." 

Spenser, the English poet, to whom Raleigh had given a few 
acres of the forty thousand he had seized, saw still living creatures 
"creeping out of every corner of the woods and glens on their hands, 
for their legs would not bear them. They did eat the dead carrion 
where they could find them, yea, and one another soon after." He 
thinks English rule can never be secure till the Irish race is ex- 
terminated. The gentle English idylllst suggests a way. The 
people are not to be allowed to till their land or pasture their cat- 
tle next season, then "they will quickly consume themselves and 
devour one another." 

English Law had made a breach in Connacht. A Lord Presi- 
dent was appointed, and a court held. From Sligo to Limerick 



3 Perrin reported that he had "left neither corn, nor horn, nor house unburnt," 
between the two ends of Munster. 



ELIZABETH CONTINUES THE CONQUEST 377 

men were to be netted and brought before it. The head of the 
Burkes, Clanrickard, a "queen's" man, was seized and sent to 
Dublin. Then all the Burkes loosened their swords in their scab- 
bards and sprang into rebellion. The rebellion grew and strength- 
ened, before the "strong measures" of the Lord President. The 
Lord Deputy, Fitzwilliam, an old man, afflicted by ills of the body, 
crafty, cautious, treacherous, freed Clanrickard, and sent him down 
to make terms. The bloody hand was stayed; for a moment there 
was peace in Connacht. Soon, the disarmed Catholics were taken 
and hanged. Surrendered garrisons were put to the sword; a search 
for "rebels" in West Connacht saw women, and boys and old men, 
and all who came in Bingham's way, slain. 

Into Leinster, too, English Law had driven a wedge. Mary of 
England's Deputies had seized Offaly and Leix, the territories of 
the O' Conors and the O'Mores. They had planted English 
settlers there; abolished the ancient territorial names and in Irish 
blood rechristened them King's and Queen's counties. The dis- 
possessed chiefs and their clansmen bided their time. A noble boy 
grew up among them, and in manhood became an avenging sword. 
This was Ruari Og O'More. He attacked the homes of the Eng- 
lish settlers; burnt their towns; took the governor of Leix and a 
Privy Councillor prisoners; made truces and kept them. After six 
years of successful guerilla warfare he fell when reconnoitring a 
force brought against him. His soldiers avenged his death and put 
the army to flight. His name remained an inspiration to oppressed 
Irish, down to the present day. "God, and Our Lady, and Rory 
O'More!" 

The English troops were commanded in Leix and Offaly by a 
Sir Francis Cosby. This man gave a banquet in the Rath of 
Mullaghmast in Kildare. And he stretched out friendly hands to 
the O'Conors and O'Mores and their followers. He invited them 
to the banquet. He gave it in the Queen's name; he promised her 
protection. They went. One gentleman, arriving late, suspected 
something, and paused. Guests went in, he saw, but none came out. 
Advancing, he reconnoitred, beheld slaughtered bodies, and being 
now attacked himself, cut his way through and escaped. Of the 
O'Mores alone, one hundred and eighty were murdered. Cosby 
lived at Strabally. A tall tree with spreading branches grew before 
his door, upon which he hanged men and women and children. If 
he hanged a mother and an infant he hanged the child in the 
mother's long hair.* 

* Ireland under Elizabeth. O'Sullivan Beare. 1621. 



378 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

But a day of reckoning came. In the battle of Glenmalure 
Cosby fell in the rout when the soldiers of Feach O' Byrne cut down 
the flying forces of Lord Gray. O'Byrne, there, in the Wicklow 
mountains, had held his country against all attempts of the English 
to seize it. Gray, newly arrived in Dublin, thought at one stroke to 
break O'Byrne's power. He gathered a great army and marched 
into Wicklow. He believed he had trapped O'Byrne. The glen 
was deep; its sides dark wooded heights and rocks; a shallow 
stream with a rugged bed flowed through. He raised an earthwork 
across the mouth that the flying Irish might be trapped and cut down 
there. To see that flight and slaughter he went up on a height, he 
and his courtiers and staff. His soldiers entered the glen, moving 
up it in silence, a long array in mail and buff and scarlet, gunsmen 
and horse. No sight of the foe; silence save for the tramp of their 
marching feet. The watchers on the height began to laugh. 'The 
game had broken away," they jested. "The old fox had run to 
earth." Then as the ranks of the column loosened on the broken 
course, the silence of the wood was shattered and the bullets of the 
Irish swept the line. O'Byrne's men sprang from the tree-clad 
slopes, leapt over the rocks, and threw themselves upon the flanks 
of the foe. Gray and his jesters fled. Of the great force with 
which he had marched out of Dublin, but a few broken companies 
returned. 



CHAPTER XLIV 

RED HUGH 

In the North the smouldering fire had flamed forth again. Two 
things rekindled it. One: The predestined boy had come whose 
advent a Tir-Conaill seer had long ago foretold. Young Hugh 
O'Donnell, Aod Ruad, the golden-haired, minatory, deadly foe to 
England; who was to stride through the history of the last years 
of the sixteenth century — the boy whose fame and renown was 
noised through the five provinces of Eirinn even before he reached 
the age of manhood, as being conspicuous for wisdom, understand- 
ing, personal beauty, and noble deeds. 

The fame and renown of him had reached the ears of Lord 
Deputy Perrot, illegitimate son of Henry VIII. Where a strong 
and ruthless hand, or treachery, was necessary to advance his 
Queen's interests in Ireland Perrot used either, as suited the 
occasion. He would have the boy. 

The dreaded lad was being fostered by MacSwiney, Lord of 
Fanat on the Northern sea's verge. When the boy was fourteen 
an innocent looking merchant ship once sailed into Loch Swilly, and 
anchored under the white stone castle of MacSwiney. The 
courteous captain had wine for sale. The courteous captain in- 
vited visitors aboard the ship. The courteous captain would like 
MacSwiney and his retinue and friends to do him the honour of 
a visit aboard, and to partake of some rare wine. They came — 
and with them the noble boy, erect and eagle-eyed, bright, proud 
and confident, "of a countenance so alluring that none could look 
at him without loving him." When the guests sat them down to 
wine in the captain's state cabin, they suddenly found themselves en- 
trapped and captured by fifty soldiers who were conjured out of 
the ship's bowels. MacSwiney and the others were released, and 
given hostages, but the boy's release could not be purchased. It 
was for him the ship had come. Red Hugh was carried away to 
Dublin and placed, a prisoner, in the Birmingham tower of the 
castle. In Fanat, throughout all Tir-Conaill, and indeed through 
Eirinn there was weeping, wrath, shame and anger. In Donegal 

379 



38o THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Castle the boy's mother, the dauntless Inghi'n Dubh, "Dark Daugh- 
ter" of MacDonnell of the Isles, now devoted her life to keep Tir- 
Conaill for the boy. She negotiated and plotted for his release — 
in vain. 

After three years the boy made a wonderful and daring escape 
on a December night — but alas ! was retaken. After another year, 
this time spent in irons, in company with Henry and Art, the sons 
of Shane O'Neill, both in irons also, he made another daring at- 
tempt — and this time succeeded in freeing all three. 

A file had been passed in to him. It was Christmas Eve, 1591, 
a dark snowy evening. Christmas cheer was flowing among the 
jailers and guards. Now, the boys thought! Outside the Castle, 
in a friend's stable, four horses bitted and saddled have stood for 
three nights. The faithful horse-boy is waiting. While the feast 
was being celebrated with wine and jollity by the Elizabethan 
Soldiers in the Castle, the boy industriously worked the file. "Link 
after link yielded to the fierce attrition and the hungry gnawings 
of the sharp toothed steel, and Red Hugh stood forth free! Free, 
and the guard giving no sign! Henry O'Neill stretched out his 
hands, while Art held the lamp. Swiftly the good file did its work, 
and Henry, unfettered, snatched the lamp from his brother's hands. 
Art was the last freed, and Hugh, youngest of the three, did all 
the filing with his own sinewy untiring hands." (Standish 
O'Grady.) 

Free now, unshackled, swift hands tore down the hangings of 
the bed, knotted them together, and the rope was ready. The hang- 
ings secured, Henry went first, then Red Hugh, and last of all 
Art, who in his descent loosened a stone which fell and struck 
him. They flung their cloaks from them when they reached the 
open air, stole to the moat, and entered the icy water. The snow 
was still falling; waiting on the bank, whitened, listening for the 
strokes of the swimmers, the horse-boy stood. He carried three 
pairs of strong shoes; their horses had unfortunately been taken 
away. Swiftly their guide led them through the dark streets and 
alleys to the outer rampart. And there Henry O'Neill was miss- 
ing, having fallen behind and lost his way. There was no time to 
return; to look for him. The Castle and death were behind.^ 

They were over it; out into the deeper darkness; past the out- 
skirts of the city; into the open country, on towards Slieve Ruadh, 
the Three Roclc Mountain; snow everywhere. They passed over 

1 Henry O'Neill succeeded in getting to Ulster and was imprisoned by the 
Earl of Tyrone, who considered him a rival as the son of Shane who had slain the 
Earl's father. 



RED HUGH 381 

bogs glimmering white, through ravines ; up among the snow drifts 
on the slope, the hardy tireless horse-boy leading, Red Hugh's pace 
"vigorous and swift." But Art — his strength and wind had given 
way— dropped behind. The swift-paced Red Hugh fell back to 
his side, supported and cheered him; kept slow step with his slow 
step. Soon Art could only limp, and moved haltingly along, with 
an arm 'on Red Hugh's shoulder and another on the horse-boy's. 
Dawn came f Christmas Day; in the city bells were heralding the 
Birth; in the Castle there was wrath and fear — and hot pursuit. 
Then Art could walk no longer. Red Hugh and the horse-boy 
carried him, Red Hugh himself with blistered feet and his own 
strength faihng. All day they were on the white mountains, linger- 
ing, resting, advancing, till at last Red Hugh could go no further, 
and the horse-boy left them, hastening if he might to save them and 
bring help from Feach O' Byrne. Between the two loughs, Dan 
and Glendalough, under a rock, or in an open cave, it is thought, 
the boys waited. They slept heavily that night, and awoke in 
the morning to a second day of cold and hunger. For forty hours 
they had eaten no food. Their cloaks were gone, shed by the 
Castle moat; they had only their doublets and hose. 

The day passed, the helpless boys waiting in the snow, and the 
furious foe engirdling the white mountains. When the morning 
of the third day came Art was dying. Red Hugh ate leaves, and 
brought some to Art. "Eat something, no matter what," he said. 
"See the brute animals, Art, they feed on leaves and grass. True, 
we are rational, yet also we are animals." 

But Art was beyond such food, beyond any food indeed. White 
death there by the rock was numbing body and brain. The snow 
began to fall again. Evening came. Red Hugh lay down by Art's 
side; the boys clasped their arms about each other. The snow 
covered them. 

In the closing twilight Feach's soldiers found them in that 
embrace. Not at once, so hidden were they under the snow. By 
the light of their lanthorns the four soldiers groped about, finding 
the search not easy. "So overlaid were they with the snow as if 
with blanket which had congealed around them, and frozen to 
them their skirts of fine linen, and their moistened shoes and leather 
covering of their feet, and they themselves were completely covered 
with snow and there was also no life in their members, but they 
were as dead." 

Their arms were disentwined, their bodies chafed, spirits put be- 
tween their lips, "the men deeply grieving as they uncovered the 
white faces, and the limp motionless limbs of the noblest born 



382 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

youths in all the land, the heir of Tir-Conaill and the son of Shane." 
Art passed away. Red Hugh revived, spoke, asked for his dying 
friend. Passionately he wept when, all saving efforts failing, Art 
died. He refused to eat or drink; he himself, famishing, cold, just 
snatched from Death. For a time the men respected his grief, then 
removed Art's body from his sight, persuaded him with kindly in- 
sistence to eat and drink a little. They wrapped him in their cloaks, 
made a litter of their spears, and bore him "within the rim of the 
broad shield extended over that region" — the shield of Feach — his 
feet swollen within the horse-boy's shoes, and brought him to Feach's 
house; Feach, of whom Spenser wrote that he "overcrowded high 
mountains and dictated terms of peace to mighty potentates." 

Red Hugh's escape sent a thrill through Ireland. Messengers 
rode north and south and east and west with the joyous word. 

After hairbreadth escapes the boy eventually reached the North. 
On a grey of speed and endurance Red Hugh rode with yellow- 
haired Turlough Boy O'Hagan into Dungannon — to Hugh O'Neill, 
"Earl" of Tir-Owen. An alliance was made between him and the 
earl, he, the boy of eighteen, who had been so deeply injured, and 
the grave sagacious man, who foresaw that the English State was 
working secretly for his overthrow; to whom the time must come 
when he would have to defend his life, his territory, his people. 
That alliance buried forever clan-diplomacies and feuds between the 
two great houses. 

O'Neill sent him on to the Lord of Fermanagh, Hugh Maguire, 
a very tall, handsome, gay-spirited young man, valiant in arms, 
who when a lord Deputy proposed to send a sheriff into Fermanagh, 
suggested to the Viceroy that he had better let him know the price of 
the sheriff's head first. Accompanied by a fleet of boats. Red Hugh 
was carried in Maguire's state barge in triumphal processsion down 
the Erne to a point on the western shore. There gentlemen of Tir- 
Conaill met him, and he went to his own castle of Ballyshannon. 
There was joy in its hall; feasting, the music of war-pipes; vows 
to follow him; men's courage renewed. He was laid on a "bed of 
healing," with swollen feet — one permanently lamed by those nights 
in the snow. But not long did he lie there. Bingham's captain was 
besieging Donegal castle. Within it his brave mother, Inghin 
Dubh,- waited for succour. The captain had gathered much spoil, 
intending, the castle taken, to bring those beeves to Connacht and 
Bingham. Red Hugh rose, laughed at his surgeons, called out his 
men, and marched to Donegal. He recovered the spoil, freed the 



- Literally Dark Daughter. 



RED HUGH 383 

castle and the Dark Daughter, and drove the captain and his 
soldiers out of Tir-Conaill. What a meeting then between him and 
his dauntless mother. For the four years of his captivity, aided 
faithfully by MacSwiney of the Battle Axes, she had never ceased 
to try to obtain his release and keep the chieftaincy for him. 

On a May day the lad was made The O'Donnell. Sir Hugh, 
his father, gladly gave place to a son so fit to rule. A weak, 
hesitating man, he had let his wife, the Dark Daughter, strike the 
blows for her stolen son. Now a mild old man, tired of a vexatious 
world where treachery and dark ways prevailed, he was about to 
seek the goal of old war-worn Irish princes, the rest and shelter of 
a monastery. 

Therefore on that May day, young, valiant, beautiful, but lame 
in one foot — the mark of his captivity — the boy with gifts of mind 
and body that had made men look to him as the hope of Ireland, 
stood on the Rock of Doone, the immemorial throne of the O'Don- 
nells, the white wand in his hand, symbol of Authority and of what 
his rule must be, white and straight; and turning thrice from left to 
right, and thrice from right to left, in honour of the Holy Trinity, 
he viewed from every point his territory. Then as he stood still, 
erect and kingly, the inaugurator called "O'Donnell!" giving 
him a title higher than any the foreigners could give, the ancient 
title of his ancestors, the princes of Tir-Conaill. And each man 
among the high officials, according to rank, cried out "O'Don- 
nell!" and the voices of hundreds of clansmen carried "O'Don- 
nell!" far into the distance. Thus Red Hugh's star rose and shone 
high in the north over Ireland; and still shines in the dark sky of 
her history. 

The Nine Years' War had begun. A spear darted through Tir- 
Conaill. The invader was driven out; chiefs who had given their 
allegiance to the foreigner were taught that the O'Donnell was 
their chief and prince. He swept through Ulster, and drove out 
the Enghsh sheriffs. He entered Connacht and hurled Bingham's 
forces before him. Hugh O'Neill watched events; waited, held his 
hand, still uncertain; could he and those like him live under English 
rule or not? He visited London, answered to the queen the charges 
made against him and won her favour for the time. But his destruc- 
tion was decided upon. He was to be inveigled to Dublin to explain 
certain fresh charges, a safe conduct being given him. Then, by 
Elizabeth's order, he was to be seized. It was ifeared he might not 
come. But he came, walking into the Council Chamber as a man 
who had nothing to dread. He would have been arrested had not 
the Black Earl of Ormond declared that he "would not use treachery 



384 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

to any man." Later he warned O'Neill to leave Dublin that night as 
the Deputy was preparing to prevent his getting away from the 
city. 

So the issue of an independent Ireland or a conquered country 
was now to be put to the sword. Almost for the first time since 
the invasion Ireland had a statesman who saw the root of her weak- 
ness, and who placed the politics of the nation before the pohtics 
of the clan. 



CHAPTER XLV 

THE NINE years' WAR 

The war was not only one of independence but a religious war as 
well. Men looked to Spain, the great Catholic country; would she 
help? Messengers crossed and re-crossed the seas. On one side 
was the entire power of England aided by her Irish auxiliaries. 
That fact, the Irish auxiliaries, had kept the English forces from 
being driven out of Ireland. Another, the Irish during the cen- 
turies had not reahsed (maintaining as so many of them did their 
own independence) that the invasion, and the subsequent colonies, 
were calculated and unswerving attempts to shatter the whole fab- 
ric of Irish civilisation, and supplant it by an alien one. In the six- 
teenth century the mass of the people had not fully realised it yet. 
They were but beginning to do so. 

And those auxiliaries — Irishmen ranked with Henry's or Eliza- 
beth's troops, winning victories over their countrymen, let the fact 
explain itself. I think it explains itself primarily by clan-politics, 
which had so often guided the actions of the chiefs. The policy of 
centralisation, attempted by one or two of the Irish kings, had 
never developed. "Despotism tends to centralisation, freedom of 
the people to decentralise," says Eoin MacNeill. And he says, 
"among the Celts as among the Greeks of antiquity and the Italians 
of the Middle Ages, the instinct of local freedom usually prevailed 
over the policy of centralisation, and what we may call neighbour- 
hoods, in which the people knew all about each other, so to speak, 
formed themselves into states for the regulation of their own af- 
fairs. The principle was the same as that which measures the 
areas of local district councils in our time, but the district council 
of antiquity had all but sovereign powers." 

The instinct of local freedom had gathered round the Norman 
houses in Ireland during the centuries. Thus Irish soldiers, always 
true to their leaders, marched with the Earl of Ormond, or the 
Earl of Kildare, or other Norman lord who paid allegiance to 
England; or followed the "queen's" O'Reilly, or "queen's" Mac- 
Mahon, or other chief, as affection, or the love of warfare, or the 

385 



386 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

pay of the mercenary, induced them. But local freedom was only 
the skin of the nation. The heart was true to nationality. The 
bards voiced its beat. They wrote not only in praise of their own 
tuath and chief, of Offaly, or Thomond, or Tir-Owen, or other 
portions of Ireland, but of Ireland as a whole, as a national unit.^ 

O'Neill cast off the title of Earl, and was proclaimed The 
O'Neill. Ulster was already organised; a Northern Confeder- 
acy was formed. His weapon was ready. Those companies whom 
he had trained were keen steel fit for use. Seven miles from his 
castle a fortress was held by the English. It stood by the Abhainn- 
Mor. The great river, Ulster called it; the Blackwater, the English. 
Men said they gave it that name, not because of its turgid waters 
but because they had so often met disaster and defeat on its banks. 
O'Neill's men stormed the fortress, drove out the English garrison, 
levelled the fort, and burnt the bridge. The queen's forces held 
Monaghan. He marched thither; gave battle to Norris, the Eng- 
lish general, who was advancing to its relief, and defeated him. 
Hugh Maguire, finest horseman in Ireland, twice rode down with 
his cavalry on the English musketeers, and twice broke them. 
Monaghan fell; the English commander was allowed to go free. 

England proclaimed O'Neill an enemy and a traitor. Armies 
were sent against him. He evaded or defeated the armies. He 
showed generalship of a high order. She recalled her best soldiers 
from the Spanish war in Belgium, and flung them into Ireland. She 
sent skilful commanders against him, Norris and Russell and Bag- 
enal. Generals and soldiers failed to break his power. Then 
Elizabeth opened negotiations, offering fair and honourable terms. 
O'Neill knew how to meet them; how much to trust. A message 
came from Spain: Fight on! Spanish soldiers are coming. O'Neill 
broke off the negotiations and the war was renewed. Sligo had 
fallen, taken by Red Hugh; Bingham's army was in retreat fol- 
lowed by O'Donnell who "harried it with missiles." Norris and 
his veterans marched out of Athlone to meet and crush Red Hugh. 

Here are moving pictures, snatched out of the Nine Years' 
War. A river in Mayo, a village; on the south bank an army of 
ten thousand horse and foot; men in scarlet or buff, tunics, with 
puffed sleeves, and iron breast-plates and backs; forests of weapons; 
bright pennants, and the banner of Saint George. A great and 
well ordered army. The general in shining steel, wide ruff, and 

1 "The names of Erin, Banba, Fodhla, the Land of Conn, are in their mouths 
every moment, and to the last they persisted in their efforts to combine the Gael 
against the Gall." Literary History of Ireland. Hyde. 

For this reason Spenser hated them. "They are tending- for the most part to 
hurt the Enghsh, for the maintenance of their own lewde libertie," he says. 



THE NINE YEARS' WAR 387 

plumed helmet; officers in shining steel and feathered caps. The 
general is Sir John Norris, who in France and Belgium had earned 
a great name, come out of those countries to clear Ulster and 
Connacht of the rebels, his laurels now a little draggled by his late 
encounters with O'Neill. On the other bank are the Irish horse 
and foot, about five thousand men. The boy who had broken 
England's gyves from his wrists is there; the army is his; every- 
where he has led it to victory. His cavalry are armed with head 
pieces, shirts of mail, a sword, a skian, a spear. Very skilful horse- 
men, who ride upon saddles without stirrups, and who carry the 
lances not under the arm when riding to the charge, but by the 
middle, above the arm. And his infantry — those picked and 
selected men of mighty bodies, the "greatest force of the battle" — 
they are the gall-oglach (gallowglasses), "great scorners of death," 
men choosing to die rather than yield, "so that when it came to 
handy blows they are quickly slain or win the field." And his light 
infantry, the cei theme (Kernes), with targets of wood, barbed 
darts and muskets : and the horse-boys, "not less serviceable in the 
meating and dressing of horses, than hurtful to the enemy with 
their darts." The Robe flows between; along its banks there is 
fighting for a day and a night. A pause; Norris's drums beat a 
parley; the boy and the veteran meet. There is a truce all day; 
every day; but fierce fighting at night, attacks on each other's camps; 
captures of out-posts and scouts; hand to hand encounters. And 
each day till sun-down the truce lasts; and Red Hugh and his chiefs 
and his friend, "the ever valiant Maguire," the gay young Lord 
of Fermanagh who is heart and soul in the war, discuss terms of 
peace with Norris. Did ever boy commander and experienced 
general meet thus as equal peers in war before? A month passes, 
and the terms come to nothing. A messenger gallops into the Irish 
camp; he brings news; a Spanish ship is in Rathmullan Bay; Spain 
has promised help. Norris raises his camp and retires, rear and 
wing harassed by the swift- following ceitherne. But to neither 
wing nor rear does he send help. Behold that high hedge in front; 
he will entrap the pursuers across, then turn and cut them down. 
Young falcon eye sees the danger. That is Red Hugh on that 
galloping horse. He holds in the men; he bids none cross. So 
Norris, baulked of his plan, continues his retreat in wrath, utter- 
ing terrible imprecations against fate which had condemned him 
"to lose in Ireland, the smallest speck of the wide world, that 
fame which his valour and military skill had earned for him in 
France and Belgium." 

Red Hugh went like a flame through the west. He scattered 



388 iTHE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

his enemies, and drove Bingham before him. He re-captured Sllgo 
castle; defeated CHfford, the English governor of Connacht, in the 
Curlew pass; brought the Burkes — the turbulent haughty Norman 
clan — to his standard and to accept his right to choose and in- 
augurate their chief; and for every day of his captivity he paid 
by the stroke of his sword. 

The war spread to Leinster; for young Eoiny O'More, son of 
Rory O'More, had returned to Leix, a boy men thought "not yet 
of an age for war." Faithful friends had brought him when a 
little child to Feach O' Byrne who had guarded him in his Wicklow 
fortress. But Feach could no longer protect him for Feach was 
dead, killed in an ambush, and his sons, Felim and Raymond, 
gallant young men fighting the enemy, could not take care of a boy 
considered too young for arms. So he was sent back to Leix. 
There he declared he was a man and would lead men. His father's 
clan gathered round him, rejoiced, and made him their chief. The 
English governor of Leix sent a force to seize him. They were 
beaten with the loss of fifty men. "A stirring youth who hath 
lately taken weapon," wrote old Fitzwilliam to London, "the 
O'Mores look to him to be their captain." Before he was of age 
Eoiny had won a name for skill and daring. He recognised 
O'Neill's authority; visited the north, and received his consent to 
strike a blow at the English forces in Munster. With eight hundred 
foot and a handful of horse the boy darted into the province. 
Ormond, in command of the queen's troops, was too late to oppose 
him. Eoiny and his men shot past. There was alarm; rapid 
musterings. The Lord President Thomas collected soldiers in 
haste and waited at Mallow to beat the audacious Leinster lad. 
The lad came up very readily. A herald rode to the gate and 
handed in a letter. Eoiny O'More challenged the Lord President 
to bring out his army and give battle. He wrote several "bold 
letters." Norris took counsel; left a small garrison in Mallow 
and retreated to Cork followed by Eoiny whose light-armed men 
skirmished with his rear. That retreat rang through Munster. 
Men enrolled; leaders and captains were found; messages were 
sent to O'Neill. The boy's dart-like stroke had re-kindled the 
war in the province. 

In the North a beautiful woman flits into the war scene — ar 
English girl, a beauty of nineteen. Her name was Mabel Bagenal. 
Her father, one Nicholas Bagenal, having killed a man of positior 
in England, had sought refuge in Ireland. The earl's grandfather. 
Conn the Lame, had befriended him, and had obtained his pardor 
from Henry VIII. Bagenal got large grants of forfeited lands 



THE NINE YEARS' WAR 389 

became a foe of O'Neill's and died Marshal of Elizabeth's forces 
in Ireland. 

In the summer of 1591, Hugh O'Neill, still in friendship with 
the queen and her Deputy, met the beauty, and they fell in love with 
each other. Her friends approved. The marriage was a great 
one for the girl. Up there in Tyrone she would be a countess and 
something more. But she had a brother, Sir Henry Bagenal, 
Marshal of Ireland, O'Neill's secret enemy. When the earl asked 
for her hand, not directly refusing, he raised difficulties about the 
"incivilities" of the earl's country. By "incivilities" he meant bar- 
barism, the word so frequently used by the English when the two 
civilisations met. He sent her to her sister, living near Dublin, 
who encouraged the lovers. Their betrothal took place, and O'Neill 
gave the girl a gold necklace of great value. A month later O'Neill 
went to a dinner at this sister's house with a retinue of English 
friends. People dined at noon. In the long August afternoon 
when the feast was over, the guests wandered on the lawns and 
played at games. But the girl slipped out of the house to where a 
pinioned horse and a gentleman of O'Neill's suite were waiting. 
There was a swift ride to a friend's house. O'Neill followed. The 
Bishop of Meath, the "queen's" bishop married them, and the earl 
took his bride north, built a fine house for her, and "furnished it out 
of London." 

Bagenal was now his mortal enemy. The beautiful girl lived 
to see her husband throw off his English title and unfurl the banner 
with the Red Hand of O'Neill. A little change of fate — and she 
might have been a queen. She became a Catholic, and died in 1596. 

Two years later O'Neill and Bagenal met. Not alone. To 
that encounter each brought an army. Bagenal at the head of 
the queen's forces had been sent to crush a prince who aimed at an 
independent Ireland. So far O'Neill had been the victor in Ulster. 
So victorious had he been that several attempts at negotiation had 
been made by the English. He had refused to meet the queen's 
commissioners except at the head of his army. Once he had dictated 
terms; the Catholic Church was to be left undisturbed; no sheriff 
admitted into Irish territories; and payment made to him of his 
wife's dowry which Bagenal had kept. While he was moving thus 
triumphantly through Ulster "every blow he dealt was re-echoed by 
Red Hugh in Connacht." 

It was 1598, the sixth year of the war; the month August. 
Bagenal was to reheve Portmore, held by a queen's garrison, now 
starving, and wipe "the rebels" out of existence. He had already 
made a successful stroke. He had got provisions into Armagh, 



390 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

occupied by queen's troops, and had surprised O'Neill's camp. 
From the latter he had been quickly dislodged, and fell back on 
Armagh. 

Before sunrise he marched out of that city to attack O'Neill. 
His English soldiers were veterans who had fought in France, or 
had been picked from Belgian garrisons. His Irish auxiliaries were 
mercenaries who had given proof of their valour. The son of the 
"queen's" O'Reilly was with them; a young man so extremely hand- 
some, of splendid figure, called the "Fair." This battle, the big- 
gest of the war in the North, is called the Battle of the Yellow 
Ford. 

Bagenal went out, his horse and foot sheathed in mail, heavily 
armed. It was an army gleaming with crested plumes, silken 
sashes, military ornaments. Brass cannon it had, mounted on 
wheels, drawn by horses. These made the army formidable. 

In the Irish camp a council of war was held. The stars had 
not waned when the leaders met. Before the tent a guard was 
drawn; around it were gathered high-born faces, "the youth of the 
nobility of Ulster," and "young Connachtmen of by no means 
ignoble birth." The lines of the camp, covering the field, stretched 
far in the dim dawn; men standing to their horses; close-knit ranks 
of gall-oglach; light armed foot; all waiting for the command; to 
accept battle or to retire. 

For patrols had brought O'Neill information of the heavy 
muskets carried by Bagenal soldiers; of the veterans trained on 
the continent; of the disciplined Irish mercenaries; of the brass 
cannon. Was it right to risk a batde? Red Hugh Avas with him. 
He had marched up from Connacht with three thousand men, one 
thousand Connacians, two thousand Ultonians. And there was 
Angus MacDonnell, Red Hugh's cousin, son of the famous Sorley 
Boy whom Shane the Proud had once taken prisoner. And Hugh 
Maguire, lord of Fermanagh, first cavalry officer in Ireland. As 
O'Neill hesitated a man stood up. He was a high official, Feareasa 
O'Clery, hereditary historian of Tir-Conaill. He held a vellum 
in his hand, centuries old. Why did the great O'Neill doubt, the 
descendant of many kings, he asked; why the noble O'Donnell, 
his prince, son, too, of kings; why the Maguire, the high-born and 
generous; why MacDonnell of the Isles; why the captains, sons 
of heroes, gathered at that council? Listen to the words of Ber- 
chan, one of the four prophets of Ireland. And the men listened. 
To Berchan, nme centuries before had been given a vision flung far 
in time. He had caught the sounds of a battle as he walked by the 
Yellow Ford; strange thunderings; battle-shouts of men; the 



THE NINE YEARS' WAR 391 

clash of arms; the charge of horse. And on him had come the 
spirit of prophecy; whereupon he wrote down that there far in the 
future the men of Erin would meet and defeat their foes. 

This decided O'Neill. The prophecy was read to the men; 
none doubted its fulfilment that day. O'Neill made them a speech 
— one sentence golden : "Victory lies not in senseless armour, nor 
in the vain din of cannon, but in living and courageous souls." 

He aAvaited battle on the ground on which the army stood. 
Across the plain that lay before the camp a deep trench had been 
dug and an embankment four feet high made. Bogs lay on each 
side of the plain, and a muddy yellow stream flowed into the trench. 
Beyond the plain was a scattered wood of hawthorns and junipers. 
Beyond this again pits had been dug and covered with hay and 
brambles. A body of light armed troops were stationed in the 
wood, "beardless youths," about five hundred, armed with muskets. 
Bagenal had to pass through the wood. The August morning 
was bright and fine. By seven his vanguard, musketeers and horse, 
was seen marching up tlie road. In the main body — pikemen in 
three columns formed the centre; cavalry and a second division of 
musketeers the rear. The "beardless youths," posted among the 
trees, fired on the van. Then they darted from tree to tree firing 
repeatedly from snaphance or matchlock. The van could not 
charge; could not dislodge them. Bagenal galloped up; tried to 
Jkeep his men steady; tried to clear the wood. But the smooth bold 
young faces mocked his efforts. "Very angry," says the historian, 
"were Bagenal and his veterans at being attacked and harassed by 
such boyish and silly sort of men." 

In time he extricated his troops, and got on the plain. The 
beardless ones held the ground in front. Bagenal ordered his 
cavalry to charge. Men and horses fell into the pits, and the boys 
fired on those who came to their rescue. There were skirmishes, 
retirements, charges, advances of fresh battalions, but it was not 
till eleven o'clock, four hours after he had entered the wood, that 
Bagenal's army found itself in front of O'Neill's camp. 

There was the ditch. It was lined by O'Neill's men. The 
battle raged here. The brass cannon soon made a breach; three 
of Bagenal's divisions got over. The Irish pikemen who had 
retired in disorder before the cannon re-formed and rushed upon 
the musketeers. Bagenal, oppressed by the weight of his armour 
and the heat of the fight, raised his visor. A bullet, then entering, 
ended his career. The Irish horse charged; the queen's musketeers 
broke and fled; their cavalry joined in the flight. A number were 
cut down as they tried to re-cross the ditch. The three divisions 



392 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

were panic-stricken, broken and flying. Nothing could stop the 
helter-skelter. The Yellow Ford was fought and won. Portmore 
and Armagh surrendered to O'Neill. 

The brilliant victory freed Ulster. It made an immense sen- 
sation in England. It was talked of on the continent. "The gen- 
eral voice," says the English contemporary historian, Moryson, 
"was of Tyrone after the defeat of the BlackAvater, as of Hannibal 
among the Romans after the defeat at Cannae." 

O'Neill's authority was recognised over the greater part of 
Ireland. He strengthened his defences, appointed or dismissed 
officials, nominated chiefs, acted with justice and wisdom. No 
English forces could stand before him. The confederation of the 
chiefs seemed firmly knit. Ireland appeared about to achieve 
her freedom. 

For a time the question was alone put to the sword. Elizabeth, 
an old woman now, with the levity of youth among her courtiers, 
an ungovernable temper when roused, sent Essex, her favourite, 
to re-conquer Ireland. He came with the largest army yet sent to 
the country. O'Neill outwitted him at every move; beat his troops; 
reduced him to impotency. Once they had an interview on the 
banks of the Lagan. O'Neill learnt his ambitions, mastered his 
thoughts; turned his mind practically inside out. He dictated 
terms; Essex accepted them as far as he could without royal 
authority. When the enraged Elizabeth heard of them she re- 
called Essex, whose head went to the block. 

Then O'Neill made something like a royal progress from the 
north to the south. The southern noblemen and gentlemen visited 
him on the banks of the Lee. He issued a proclamation styling 
himself Defender of the Faith. He showed himself a statesman 
and soldier. When he returned to the North his power was con- 
firmed. 

If the sword failed there were other methods for England to use. 
Mountjoy and George Carew were sent to Ireland. These men 
were to break up the confederation. Craft, treachery, offers of 
friendship (not to be kept), gold, bribes, were their weapons. 
Letters of betrayal were forged purporting to come from a member 
of the confederation. In time these methods succeeded. The 
confederation was weakened. There were serious defections, and 
O'Neill and O'Donnell were eventually left to carry on the fight in 
Ulster. This they did heroically. O'Donnell held the coast lines 
on the north against an English force that had landed there; O'Neill 
the southern frontier. "They fought as it were back to back against 



THE NINE YEARS' WAR 393 

the opposite lines of attack." Through the spring and summer of 
1 60 1 that fight went on. By September little had been gained by 
the English except in Munster. Then came the long promised aid 
from Spain; three thousand men were landed at Kinsale — instead 
of the five thousand which O'Neill had warned must be the minimum, 
if landing was made in the south. The English troops were at 
once concentrated in the south, and Kinsale invested by an English 
fleet. The general in command of the Spaniards* was unfit for the 
v/ork; an ill-tempered, impatient man with no grasp of generalship. 
He was dismayed and angry at finding himself besieged instead of 
meeting friends. Sorely against their will he forced the Northern 
Chiefs to march and fight their way south to him. And then, again 
contrary to O'Neill's expert advice, forced them to attack his 
besiegers (under Carew) when it were wiser to besiege them. A 
series of fatal mistakes, aggravating d'Aquila's bad generalship, 
lost them a battle that they could have won — and which, being won, 
would, in all probability, have left Ireland an independent king- 
dom. 

By error and accident it was lost. A council was held that 
night. Though O'Neill wished to continue the war in Munster, 
as some of the northern chiefs for private reasons decided to return 
to their own territories, Hugh O'Neill was forced to fall back on 
Ulster. O'Donnell sailed for Spain to see the king, and ask for 
further help. After bright promises, delays, disappointments he 
fell ill on his way to see the King again, died, and was buried with 
princely honours in the Cathedral of St. Francis, Valladolid. 

For three hundred years his death was supposed to be from 
natural cause. Then, by chance, it was discovered in an English 
State paper that Carew with Mountjoy's approval had sent an 
agent to Spain to poison Red Hugh. He was twenty-eight when 
he died. His captivity when a boy, his escape, his brilliancy as a 
commander, his many victories, his unalterable hatred of the in- 
vader, his loyalty to O'Neill, the whole romance of his story has 
attracted Irish hearts to him through the centuries since his death. 
"He was the sword, as O'Neill was the brain, of the Ulster con- 
federation." His voice was sweet and musical. He loved jus- 
tice and was faithful to his promises. He showed courage and 
resource in the presence of difficulties; was quick to seize oppor- 
tunities; maintained rigid discipline in his army; was patient in 
hardships; courteous and affable in manner; absolutely open and 
sincere. He never married; his private life was without a stain. 
One who knew him said "he was a great despiser of the world." 



394 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Noble, generous, with tireless activity, daring, with his handsome 
person, his splendid spirit, as one of the last of Ireland's princes, 
his name has been a star in the nation's memory. 

Three strongholds remained for the Irish in Munster after 
d'Aquila had capitulated, getting off safe with his men. They held 
out, hoping for new aid from Spain. Each was isolated. In time 
they fell. The defence of Dunboy castle by Donal O'Sullivan and 
his captain, MacGeoghegan, and, when it fell, of O'Sullivan's march 
with one thousand persons including women and children from 
Kerry to O'Rourke's castle in Leitrim, is a great epic, unknown 
outside Ireland. It has all the elements of the great Tragedies; 
indomitable souled men; defiance of fate; encounters with foes; 
encounters with the elements, with storm and frost and snow; men 
with dying bodies and unquenchable spirit, battling, marching, 
praying. Of the company scarce one hundred reached O'Rourke's 
country. 

O'Neill fought his way up to Ulster, fought there, held his own 
for months. When news came of O'Donnell's death and he knew 
the cause was lost, he accepted terms offered him by the Lord 
Deputy. His territories were to be restored to him; the Catholic 
religion given free exercise within them; a fresh patent of earldom 
drawn out. Red Hugh's younger brother, Ruari O'Donnell, had 
already submitted, obtained terms, and was made Earl of Tir- 
Conaill. 

Before the treaty was signed Elizabeth died — a maniac. James 
of Scotland, who succeeded her, formed a plan for planting Ulster 
with Scotch and English settlers. But the two Earls were in the 
way. It was necessary to destroy them. The method was the old 
one. They were to be charged with a plot. An anonymous letter 
found by the Council Chamber in Dublin Castle revealed the plot. 
According to it O'Neill intended to seize the Castle, slay the 
Deputy, and start another rebellion. 

The letter really emanated from London. It was devised by 
Cecil, the Secretary of State; St. Lawrence, Lord Howth, was to 
carry out the plot and to inveigle O'Neill and O'Donnell to a meet- 
ing in his house. It was sufficient. They were cited to appear 
in London to answer the charge. With his perfect knowledge of 
the English Government's craft, and aware that the planters were 
waiting for the word to fall upon O'Donnell's and his own terri- 
tories, O'Neill knew that their destruction had been decided upon. 
Their case was desperate. Safety alone was in flight. Yet the 
thought filled them with bitter sorrow. 

Into exile they must go. There were those who would wel- 



THE NINE YEARS' WAR 395 

come them on the continent; the Archdukes in Brussels; the King 
of Spain; the Pope in Rome. And there were Irish swordsmen 
in the continental armies. A chance might arise. If O'Neill was 
old, he was yet unbroken; and there were his sons, Hugh and 
Shane and Brian, and his nephew Art; to them, or to one of them, 
might be giv^en the task to take up that sword that he had laid 
down, when he accepted Mountjoy's terms. 

A French ship entered, anchored in. Lough Swilly. O'Neill 
journeying northward at the news, stayed at a friend's house on 
the way "wept abundantly when he took his leave, giving every 
child and every servant in the house a solemn farewell, which made 
them all marvel, because in general it was not his manner to use 
such compliments." He remained two nights in his own home, 
Dungannon castle. There must have been anguish in his soul. 
Statesman, soldier, victorious general he had been; now all was 
over. On the border of old age, beset with cruel enemies, what 
fate might await him? And Ireland — Tyrone? The wolves were 
out, the bitter planters, the greedy adventurers; who could resist 
them? 

It was 1607. He journeyed to Lough Swilly with his wife 
Catherine, daughter of MacGuiness, Lord of Iveagh, his three 
sons, other relations and attendants. Ruari O'Donnell was al- 
ready there with his two brothers, his sister Nuala, his hereditary 
bard and attendants. And there was Conor Maguire, brother of 
Hugh now dead; fifty persons in all in the flight. The Flight of 
the Earls it is called in Irish history. It stirred darkly the hearts 
of the Irish. The ominous news went from province to province. 
The bards dirged it. Men knew that the last bulwark against the 
Saxon sheriff and the Saxon Law had fallen. "It is certain that 
the sea has not borne, and the wind has not wafted in modern 
times," wrote the Four Masters nearly thirty years later, "a num- 
ber of persons in one ship more eminent, illustrious, noble in point 
of genealogy, heroic deeds, valour, feats of arms, and brave 
achievements than they. Would God had permitted them, to re- 
main in their inheritance." ^ 

3 THE PRINCES OF THE NORTH 

BY ETHNA CAREER Y 

Summer and winter the long years have flown 
Since you looked your last for ever on the hills of Tyrone; 
On the vales of Tyrconnell, on the faces strained that night 
To watch you, Hugh and Rory, over waves in your flight. 

Not in Uladh of your kindred your beds hath been made, 

Where the holy earth laps them and the quicken-tree gives shade ; 



396 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

After a fearfully perilous voyage they landed in France. They 
visited different courts, in time settling in Rome where the Pope 
gave them a handsome pension. O'Donnell died within a year; 
O'Neill in 1616. English spies surrounded him till his death. 
Their reports mention that in the evenings, after dining, O'Neill 
had but one topic: "his face would glow, he would strike the table, 
he would say that they would yet have a good day in Ireland." On 
his death every honour paid to royalty was paid to him. He was 
buried in the Franciscan Church of San Pietro di Montorio, on 
the Janiculum hill. One of his sons had died before him; and an- 
other, Brian, page to the Archdukes in Brussels, was murdered by 
agents of the English Government. 

The Nine Years' War was the last stand that Ireland as a na- 
tion under her own laws made against England and English laws. 
After the battle of Kinsale the new rule rushed in. Not every 
thing native went down at first; the schools for a time continued. 
Wherever breathing space was found they arose and flourished. 
They kept the learning and the traditions of the past. They pro- 
duced a generation of scholars who saved from utter destruction 
the records of Irish civilisation and Irish history. "During the 
first half of the seventeenth century, the Irish, heavily handicapped 
as they were, and deprived of the power of printing, nevertheless 
made tremendous efforts to keep abreast of the rest of Europe in 

But your dust lies afar, where Rome hath given space 
To the tanist of O'Donnell, and the Prince of Nial's race. 

O, sad in green Tyrone when you left us, Hugh O'Neill, 

In our grief and bitter need, to the spoiler's cruel steel 1 

And sad in Donegal when you went, O 1 Rory Ban, 

From your father's rugged towers and the wailing of your clan I 

Our hearts had bled to hear of that dastard deed in Spain ; 
We wept our Eaglet, in his pride by Saxon vileness slain ; 
And, girded for revenge, we waited but the call of war 
To bring us like a headlong wave from heathery height and scaur. 

OcJwn and ochon! when the tidings travelled forth 

That our chiefs had sailed in sorrow from the glens of the North ; 

Ochon and ochon! how our souls grew sore afraid. 

And our love followed after in the track your keel had made I 

And yet in green Tyrone they keep your memory still. 
And tell you never fled afar, but sleep in Aileach Hill — 
In stony sleep, with sword in hand and stony steed beside, 
Until the Call shall waken you — the rock gate open wide. 

Will you come again, O Hugh, in all your olden power, 

In all the strength and skill we knew, with Rory, in that hour 

When the Sword leaps from its scabbard, and the Night hath passed away, 

And Banba's battle-cry rings loud at Dawning of the Day? 

— ^From "The Four Winds of Eirinn." 



THE NINE YEARS' WAR 397 

science and literature. It was indeed an age of national scholar- 
ship which has never since been equalled. It was this century that 
produced in rapid succession Geoffrey Keating, the Four Masters, 
and Duald MacFirbis, men of whom any age or country might 
be proud, men who amid the war, the rapine, and conflagration 
that rolled through the country with the English soldiers, still strove 
to save from the general wreck those records of their country which 
to-day make the name of Ireland honourable for her antiquities, 
traditions, and history, in the eyes of the scholars of Europe." * 

Not till the end of the seventeenth century were these schools 
finally crushed. The hedge-schools were their shadowy children. 
While the Irish language was the language of the mass of the peo- 
ple the history and traditions of the country were familiar to them. 
To the 1 8th century belong the majority of those manuscripts writ- 
ten in beautiful script, on coarse paper stained brown by turf-smoke, 
bound in untanned sheep-skin covers, which re-tell the Heroic Tales 
and folklore of Ireland. And so vivid and strong was oral tradi- 
tion enshrined in the language that a poor blind wandering poet in 
the early years of the 19th century can relate in verse after verse 
the history of his country from the mythic invasions to the Tithe- 
war of his own day. 

At the end of the Elizabethan wars the conquest of Ireland 
appeared completed. The beginning of the 17th century saw the 
overthrow of the clan and communal system, the destruction of 
the great Gaelic Houses, and the establishment of centralisation 
by a despotic power. The centralisation, carried out rigorously, 
placed the government, patronage, power, and the ownership of 
the land in the hands of the English colonists. The standing fact, 
however, is that the conquest was not completed. It was surface 
deep, no more. On that surface the English Lav/ ran, and her 
armed forces moved. But the soul of Ireland was unconquered. 
For two centuries after the conclusion of the Elizabethan wars the 
great bulwark of Irish nationality was the Irish language. Eng- 
land recognised this; she made every effort to destroy it. The 
memory of the Brehon Laws survived to the 19th century, and 
showed itself in the Land League and the people's claims. Ire- 
land's body was in chains, but her soul and mind were free. 

FOR THE ELIZABETHAN PERIOD: 

Carew's Manuscripts. 

Dymmok's Treatise. 

Hyde's Literary History of Ireland. 

^Douglas Hyde, "Literary History of Ireland." 



398 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Sir John Davies* Letters. 

Mountjoy's Report to English Privy Council. 

Rev. C. P. Meehan, M. R. I. A., Irish Franciscan Monasteries. 

O'Clery's Life of O'DonncU. 

Edmund Spenser's View of the State of Ireland. 

Don Philip O'SuUivan's History of the Catholic War in Ireland. 

Pacata Hibernia. 

Fynes Morryson. 

Sir William Stanley's Letters. 



CHAPTER XLVI 

SUPPRESSING THE RACE 

Through these many dread centuries England's energies were con- 
centrated upon an effort, seemingly, to annihilate the Irish race. 

Says Edmund Burke (Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe) : 
"All the penal laws of that unparalleled code of oppression were 
manifestly the effects of national hatred and scorn towards a con- 
quered people whom the victors delighted to trample upon and 
were not at all afraid to provoke. They were not the effect of 
their fears, but of their security . . . whilst that temper pre- 
vailed, and it prevailed in all its force to a time within our mem- 
ory, every measure was pleasing and popular just in proportion 
as it tended to harass and ruin a set of people who were looked 
upon as enemies to God and man; indeed, as a race of savages 
who were a disgrace to human nature itself." 

Yet with that sublime disregard of humour which Is the privi- 
lege of an elect people, one old English historian and champion 
piously exclaims anent "how much Ireland is beholden to God for 
suffering them to be conquered, whereby many of their enmities 
were cured — and more might be, were themselves only pliable." 

Differing from most other conquered peoples the Irish have 
been made to suffer through the centuries not only from the con- 
queror's dreadful sword but perhaps even more from the con- 
queror's far more dreadful "justice." The laws imposed upon 
Ireland from the Norman's first coming, down till to-day or yes- 
terday, far surpassed In ferocity any of the repressive systems 
temporarily imposed upon any other of the sorest suffering con- 
quered ones of the world. 

For many cruel centuries British law In Ireland only took no- 
tice of the native as a subject on which to exercise Its repressive 
or exterminating power. We have record of a trial In Waterford 
as early as 13 lo — when the British law was still new to the nation 
— in which Robert le Waleys, a Briton, was charged with the mur- 
der of John, the son of Ivor MacGillemory. The defence taken 
was that while admitting the prisoner had killed John, yet it was 

399 



400 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

no murder, since the slain one was only an Irishman 1 To meet 
this effective line of defence the public prosecutor contended that 
the man killed was not Irish but Ostman (Dane). In the same 
era we find Donal O'Neill, in his remonstrance addressed to Pope 
John XX, stating that the murder of an Irishman was not a felony, 
and "it is no more sin say even some of their religious to kill an 
Irishman than to kill a dog." "They were out of the protection 
of the law," says Sir John Davies, "so that every Englishman 
might oppresse, spoile, and kill them Avithout controulement." ^ 

And Sir Richard Cox, himself one of the elect, records: "If 
an Englishman be damnified by an Irishman not amenable to law, 
he may reprise himself on the whole tribe or nation." 

Says the English historian Leland: "Every inconsiderable 
party, who, under pretence of loyalty, received the king's com- 
mission to repel the adversary in some particular district, became 
pestilent enemies to the inhabitants. Their properties, their lives, 
the chastity of their families, were all exposed to barbarians, who 
sought only to glut their brutal passions, and by their horrible ex- 
cesses, saith the annalist, purchased the curse of God and man." 

The solemn and well considered statutes of the realm were 
likewise well designed to make smooth the lot of English exiles 
among the wild Irishrie. "It shall be lawful," says one of these 
statutes (5 Ed. IV) "to all manner of men that find any thieves 
robbing by day or by night, or going or coming to rob or steal, 
having no faithful man of good name in their company, in Eng- 
lish apparel, upon any of the liege people of the king, to take and 
kill them, and to cut off their heads, without any impeachment of 
our sovereign lord the king, his heirs, ofl!icers, or ministers, or of 
any others." In plain language this empowered any of the British 
in Ireland to kill at sight any Irishman whom he wished to kill. 

In the reign of the third Edward was passed the famous Statute 
of Kilkenny for reclaiming or preserving the English in Ireland 
from Irish witchery. Although the beneficent laws had branded 
Irishmen outlaws in their own country, and the rulers had pro- 
claimed them savages, barbarians, it was noticed that their man- 
ners, their customs, their dress, their ways, their language, had 

* Davies, in his "Discoverie," said that the plagues of Egypt were short, but 
the plagues of Ireland lasted four hundred years. It was three hundred years ago 
that Davies wrote this when the said plagues were only beginning to get the stride 
which carried them through centuries after with ever-increasing impetus. Davies, 
then, had just aided in imposing on the stricken country one of the worst of the 
plagues — the British Undertaker on whom was bestowed the lands of which his 
master, James the First, robbed the Ulstermen. 



SUPPRESSING THE RACE 401 

uncanny attraction for the Anglo-Norman settlers who quickly 
became Irish in all these things; so the Statute of Kilkenny was 
in 1367 considered necessary. This Statute made it high treason 
to adopt the Irish dress, speak the Irish language, practise the 
Irish customs, avail of the Irish laws (which were "wicked and 
damnable"), follow Irish fosterage or gossipred, or intermarry 
with the Irish. Yet, despite this Statute, and many others to 
the same purport passed again and again in later generations, the 
ways — and the women — of the outlawed "barbarian" still be- 
witched and won the hearts of the Anglo-Normans, till at length 
they became — in the historic phrase used in the English complaint 
"ipsis Hibernicis Hiberniores" — more Irish than the Irish them- 
selves. They had become savage of the savage, adopting all the 
"savage" manners, customs, dress, language. 

Languages it should be said, for the Irish "savages" spoke 
Irish and Latin indifferently. Sir Richard Cox complained that 
"every cowboy in Ireland" tried his tongue at Latin. Sir John 
Perrott (1585) reported of one of "the degenerate English" — 
the term applied to those who had voluntarily resigned their Eng- 
lish heritage, and assimilated with the Irish — "I found MacWil- 
liam verie sensible, and though wanting the English tongue yet 
understanding the Latin." 

When the De Burghos renounced England to become Irish in 
all things (under the name of MacWilliam) they came before the 
English Castle at Athenry, and in sight of the garrison there, 
threw off their English dress, and donned the Irish costume. 

In 1569 one of the Galway English, Dominick Linche, makes 
complaint to the English Privy Council that "the brothers of the 
erle of clan-Rickerde, yea, and one of his uncles, and he a byeshop 
(bishop) can neither speak nor understand anything of the Eng- 
lish language." Their languages, like that of the Irish of their 
class, were Irish and Latin. In 1535 a Welsh officer marching 
in the South with Lord Butler, wrote in surprise of the type of 
"degenerate English" which he met. One of them, a brother-in- 
law of Lord Butler, whose name, had he not fallen away, would 
have been FitzGerald, but who now wore the Irish name of Mac- 
Shean, could speak never a word of English, "but he made the 
troops good cheer in the gentlest fashion that could be." Refine- 
ment and gentility, in a man who scorned the English language, 
were amazing to find! 

And in 1589, after Munster had been successively devastated 
by first ruthless war, then famine, and then planted with English 



402 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

undertakers, one of the latter, Robert Paine, writing from Limer- 
ick to his partners in England, says that "English is being taught 
to Irish pupils there through the medium of Latin." (Paine's 
"Brief Description of Ireland in 1589.") 

"The verie English of birth," complains Campion, "convers- 
ant with the brutish sort of that people [the Irish] become de- 
generate in short space, and quite altered into the first ranke of 
Irish rogues." Yet, elsewhere we discover from Campion re- 
garding these brutish Irish: "They speake Latine like a vulgar 
tongue, learned in their common schools of leachcraft and law, 
whereat they begin children, and hold on sixteene or twentie years 
conning by roatc the aphorisms of Hypocrates, and the Civill 
Institutions."" 

After the new religion had been introduced to Ireland new 
doors were open for the persecution of the Irish Race, and fresh 
inspiration for the work was supplied. By virtue of Henry's war- 
rant, the churches and monasteries were robbed of their riches, 
shrines were defiled, sacred relics were burned or scattered, beau- 
tiful statues were smashed, orders of religious were expelled from 
hundreds of their houses — which went to enrich his minions — and 
beautiful churches were wrested from the people. 

And as the Reformation progressed in age, its ingenious meth- 
ods for bringing the knowledge of the true God to the people 
progressed likewise. Some of the subjects chosen for inducting 
of religion into, "were burned before a slow fire; some were put 
on the rack and tortured to death; whilst others, like Ambrose 
Cahill and James O'Reilly, were not only slain with the greatest 
cruelty, but their inanimate bodies were torn into fragments, and 
scattered before the wind." The fate of the gentle and saintly 
Archbishop Plunkett is only too well known : "His speech ended 
and the cap drawn over his eyes, Oliver Plunkett again recom- 
mended his happy soul, with raptures of devotion into the hands 
of Jesus, his Saviour, for whose sake he died — till the cart was 
drawn from under him. Thus then he hung betwixt Heaven and 
earth, an open sacrifice to God for innocence and religion; and 
as soon as he expired the executioner ripped his body open and 

2 And the prejudiced Campion admits of these savages: "The people are 
thus inclined ; religious, franke, amorous, iref ull, suflferable of paines infinite, very 
•glorious, great givers, passing in hospitalitie ; the lewder sort are sensual, but 
reformed, are such mirrours of holinesse and austeritie, that other nations retain 
but a shewe or shadow of devotion in comparison of them. Abstinence and 
fasting is to them a familiar kind of chastisement. They are sharp-witted, lovers 
of learning, capable of any studie whereunto they bend themselves, constant in 
travaile, adventurous, intractable, kinde-hearted, secret in displeasure." 



SUPPRESSING THE RACE 403 

pulled out his heart and bowels, and threw them in the fire already 
kindled near the gallows for that purpose."^ 

Under Elizabeth it was enacted that every Romish priest found 
in Ireland after a certain date should be deemed guilty of re- 
bellion, that he should be hanged till dead, then his head taken off, 
his bowels taken out and burned, and his head fixed on a pole in 
some public place. 

Keating tells us how Bishop Patrick O'Healy and Cornelius 
O'Rourke were put to the rack, had their hands and feet broken 
by hammers, needles thrust under their nails, and were finally 
hanged and quartered. 

It was under Elizabeth that the price fixed on the head of a 
priest was made uniform with that on the head of a wolf.* And 
under her was passed the law of Recusancy fixing heavT^ penalties 
upon all delinquents who refused to attend Sabbath services in the 
church of the new religion. 

It was not alone the religion of the Irish people that was then 
sought to be wiped out, but their very life. Her armies with torch 
and sword, converted a smiling fruitful country into a fearful 
desert. Edmund Spenser in his "View of the State of Ireland" 
thus graphically pictures a little of what Elizabeth accompHshed: 
"Notwithstanding that the same was a most rich and plentiful 
country, full of corne and cattel, yet, ere one yeare and a half, 
they were brought to such wretchedness as that any stony heart 
would rue the same. Out of every corner of the woods and glenns, 
they came creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs could 
not bear them; they looked like anatomies of death; they spake 
like ghosts crying out of their graves; they did eate the dead 

3 The following are a few samples of the tens of thousands of such eflforts 
for the reforming of the Irish. — Two Franciscans were taken and thrown into 
the sea, and another was trampled to death by horses. Three laymen, at Smer- 
wick, had their legs and arms broken with hammers, and then were hanged, and 
similar torture was inflicted on the abbot of Boyle. Three Franciscans, at Abbey- 
leix, were first beaten with sticks, then scourged with whips until the blood came, 
and finally were hanged. One Roche was taken to London and flogged publicly 
through the streets, and then tortured in prison until, he died ; another being 
flogged, had salt and vinegar rubbed into his wounds, and then was placed on 
the rack and tortured to death. And Collins, a priest at Cork, was first tortured, 
then hanged, and whilst he yet breathed, his heart was cut out and held up, 
soldiers around crying out in exultation. Long live the Queen. — From "Our 
Martyrs," quoted by E. A. D'Alton in his "History of Ireland." 

* Five pounds was the usual price for both — but Burton's Parliamentary Diary 
of June 10th, i567, records the words of Major Morgan, M.P for Wicklow — who 
was protesting in Parliament against striking more taxes on Ireland — "We have 
three beasts to destroy that lay burdens upon us ; the first is a wolf upon whom 
we lay five pounds ; the second beast is a priest on whom we lay ten pounds — if 
he be eminent, ricre ; the third beast is a Tory," etc. 



404 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

carrions, happy where they could finde them; yea, and one another 
soone after; insomuch as the very carcasses they spared not to 
scrape out of their graves, and, if they found a plot of water- 
cresses or shamrocks, there they flocked as to a feast for the time; 
yet, not able to continue there withal; that in shorte space, there 
was none almost left, and a most populous and plentiful countrey 
suddainlie left voyde of man and beast." 

Lecky in the preface to his History of Ireland in the Eighteenth 
Century says: "The slaughter of Irishmen was looked upon as 
literally the slaughter of wild beasts. Not only men, but even 
women and children who fell into the hands of the English, were 
deliberately and systematically butchered. Bands of soldiers tra- 
versed great tracts of country, slaying every living thing they met." 
And he also says: "The suppression of the native race was car- 
ried on with a ferocity which surpassed that of Alva in the Nether- 
lands, and which has seldom been exceeded in the pages of his- 
tory." 

The honest Scottish Protestant Dr. Smiles sums up the Eliza- 
bethan work in Ireland, "Men, women and children wherever 
found were put indiscriminately to death. The soldiery was mad 
for blood. Priests were murdered at the altar, children at their 
mother's breast. The beauty of woman, the venerableness of age, 
the innocence of youth was no protection against these sanguinary 
demons in human form." 

The Protestant Rev. Dr. Taylor, in his History of the Ci\nl 
War in Ireland, bears testimony to the fact that these Irish bar- 
barians, when opportunity offered for avenging themselves on 
their persecutors, took their revenge in a manner that would have 
done credit to a civilised people — say, to the gentle English. He 
tells how, when in the reign of Queen Mary the persecutors of the 
Catholics found their occupation gone, "The restoration of the 
old religion was effected without violence : no persecution of the 
Protestants was attempted; and several of the English, who fled 
from the furious zeal of Mary's inquisitors, found a safe retreat 
among the Catholics of Ireland. It is but justice to this maligned 
body to add that they never injured a single person in life or limb 
for professing a religion different from their own. They had 
suffered persecution and learned mercy, as they showed in the 
reign of Mary, and in the wars from 1641 to 1648."^ 

^ For more light upon the subject of this Chapter see tht- later Chapter on 
Cromwell. 



CHAPTER XLVII 

THE ULSTER PLANTATION 

Within a decade after the "Flight of the Earls" came the Ulster 
Plantation — a scheme of fatal and far-reaching consequence for 
the Island ever since. 

It was the Sixth James of Scotland who, after he became James 
I of England, perpetrated this crime. The land-greedy and gain- 
greedy among his Scotic fellow-countrymen, and among the Eng- 
lish, were the instigators. Upon Ireland the covetous eyes of such 
people were ever turned. The flight of the Earls proved a wel- 
come excuse for the wholesale robbing of the clans. It was a very 
simple matter to find that all the Northern chiefs had been con- 
spiring to rebel — against England. Hence they were "traitors" 
— to England ! And naturally their estates were forfeit and for 
distribution among James' hungry followers. 

That the clan-lands did not then, or ever at any time, belong 
to the chieftain, but to the whole clan community, was a matter of 
no consequence. According to English law and custom it should be- 
long to the people's lords (chiefs). And if "civilised" law did 
not obtain in Ireland, it must be imposed wheresoever British 
profit could be reaped from such imposition. 

The English Lord Lieutenant, Sir Arthur Chichester, and the 
Attorney General, Sir John Davies, were the instruments, under 
James, for giving effect to the great Plantation. The lands of 
the six counties of Donegal, Derry (then called Coleraine), Ty- 
rone, Fermanagh, Cavan and Armagh — four million acres — were 
confiscated. (The lands of the three remaining Ulster counties, 
Antrim, Down and Monaghan were bestowed upon Britons at 
other times.) The true owners, the natives, were driven like wild 
fowl or beasts, from the rich and fertile valleys of Ulster, which 
had been theirs from time immemorial, to the bogs and the moors 
and the barren crags — where it was hoped that they might starve 
and perish. English and Scotch Undertakers (as they were 
called), and Servitors of the Crown, scrambled for the fertile 
lands which were given to them in parcels of one thousand, one 

405 



4o6 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

thousand five hundred, and two thousand acres. The County of 
Coleraine (Derry) was divided up among the London trade 
Guilds, the drapers, fishmongers, vintners, haberdashers, etc. — 
who had financed the Plantation scheme. The Church termon 
lands were bestowed upon the Protestant bishops. And thus a 
new nation was planted upon the fair face of Ireland's proudest 
quarter. 

The new nation was meant to be the permanent nation there. 
The written conditions upon which the new people got their lands 
specifically bound them to repress and abhor the Irish natives — 
conditions which through hundreds of years since the new people 
have faithfully endeavoured to carry out. They were bound never 
to alien the lands to Irish, to admit no Irish customs, not to inter- 
marry with the Irish, not to permit any Irish other than menials 
to exist on or near their lands. And they were bound to build 
castles and bawns, and keep many armed British retainers — thus 
constituting a permanent British garrison which would help to 
tame if not exterminate the Irish race. Sir John Davies, the Scotic 
king's very faithful servant, assures us that his master did tame 
the whole race. In his book, "A Discoverie of the True Causes 
why Ireland was never Subdued and Brought under Obedience to 
the Crowne of England until the Beginning of His Majestie's 
Happie Reign," he says, "The multitude having been brayed as it 
were in a mortar with sword, pestilence and famine, altogether 
became admirers of the Crowne of England." 

And when they were made true admirers of the Crown of 
England it was that their fertile possessions were given to the 
stranger, and they sent to co-habit with the snipe and the badger 
among the rocks and heather. And the faithful servant, Sir John, 
a pious Puritan rogue who strained his powers to rob and wrong 
the natives even far beyond the sweeping robbery powers which 
the "law" provided to his hand — this Saint, in the traditional 
British fashion, tells us: "This transplanting of the natives is 
made by his Majestic like a father, rather than a lord or monarch. 
. . . So as his Majestic doth in this imitate the skilful husband- 
man who doth remove his fruit trees, not on purpose to extirpate 
and destroy, but the rather that they may bring forth better and 
sweeter fruit 1" And when the starving one, from his perch among 
the rocks, glanced over the smiling valleys from which James had 
transplanted him for his own betterment, it is easy to conceive 
the depth of feeling with which he appreciated that kind father's 
solicitude. 

The character of the Planters who were given the lands of 



THE ULSTER PLANTATION 407 

the hunted ones is recorded for us by the son of one of them, and 
also by a later one of their own descendants. Reid in his "His- 
tory of the Irish Presbyterians" says: "Among those whom divine 
Providence did send to Ireland . . . the most part were such as 
either poverty or scandalous lives had forced hither." 

And Stewart, the son of a Presbyterian minister who was one 
of the Planters, writes: "From Scotland came many, and from 
England not a few, yet all of them generally the scum of both 
nations, who from debt, or breaking, or fleeing justice, or seeking 
shelter, came hither hoping to be without fear of man's justice." 

Sore indeed was the lot of the poor Irish in the woods, and 
mountains, and moors. Thousands of them perished of starva- 
tion. Other many thousands sailed away under leaders to enlist 
in the Continental armies. To far Sweden alone went no less than 
six thousand swordsmen. But the lot of those who lived and re- 
mained was sorer far than of those who went either to exile or to 
death.' 

Hill's Plantation of Ulster. 
Sir John Davies' Irish Tracts. 
MacNevin's Ulster Plantation. 

^ The great wrong inflicted upon those who were robbed of their all, to en- 
rich James' Scots and English, is well exemplified in an incident related by the 
Loyalist Duchess of Buckingham (married to the Earl of Antrim), who, when 
she was taking a thousand men southward, to strengthen the cause of Charles, 
went aside at Limavady to see the wife of O'Cathain, late chieftain of that coun- 
try. In the ruined hall of the O'Cathain castle — once the frequent scene of light- 
hearted revelry, but whose window-casements now were stuffed with straw — was 
huddled O'Cathain's lady whose beauty and whose bounty had evoked sweet tunes 
from many harps, and inspired many a minstrel's lay. Wrapt in an old blanket, 
she was seated on her hams on the hearth, cowering over a miserable fire of 
brambles which she had laboriouslv gathered from the woods. 



CHAPTER XLVIII 

THE RISING OF 1 64 1 

But the Irish were not content to starve and die upon the moors, 
while they watched the usurper wax fat upon their fathers' fertile 
plains. As their suffering and starvation were prolonged and 
increased, their wrath against the foreign robber daily grew greater 
also; and ere a generation had elapsed, it burst in a fierce red flood 
that swept the terrorised Undertakers before it — and just nar- 
rowly missed sweeping them from Ulster forever. 

The Rising of 1641 was the natural outcome of the great 
wrong of the generation before. And the reader can easily un- 
derstand the frenzied fury with which this rebellion overswept 
northern Ireland, and the swift vengeance wreaked by the fren- 
zied ones upon the callous robber and oppressor — a vengeance, 
however, lacking the calculated savagery, and unspeakable brutal- 
ity, which, in return the Scottish and English troops visited upon 
the native population, of both sexes and all ages, during the fear- 
ful decade that followed. 

To Rory O'Moore,' of the Offaly family of the O'Moores, 

iRORY O'MOORE 

(An Ulster Ballad of the Rising) 

On the green hills of Ulster the white cross waves high, 
And the beacon of war throws its flames to the sky ; 
Now the taunt and the threat let the coward endure, 
Our hope is in God and in Rory O'Moore I 

Do j'ou ask why the beacon and banner of war 
On the mountains of Ulster are seen from afar? 
'Tis the signal our rights to regain and secure. 
Through God and our Lady and Rory O'Moore ! 

For the merciless Scots, with their creed and their swords, 
With war in their bosoms, and peace in their words, 
Have sworn the bright light of our faith to obscure. 
But our hope is in God and Rory O'Moore. 

Oh ! lives there a traitor who'd shrink from the strife 
Who, to add to the length of a forfeited life. 
His country, his kindred, his faith would abjure? 
No ! we'll strike for our God and for Rory O'Moore f 
408 



THE RISING OF 1641 409 

a cultured and travelled gentleman, is chiefly due the credit for 
that great resurgence of the Irish race. For years he patiently 
worked both among the leading Irish families at home, Irish Gen- 
erals in the Continental armies, and other representative Irish 
exiles and sympathisers in the European countries — to bring about 
the overthrow of the British power in Ireland. And, plans being 
all matured, the Rising broke in Ulster on the night of the 21st 
October, 1641. 

The Rising of that memorable night was a wonderfully drama- 
tic coup. Leaders of the old Ulster families — Phelim O'Neill, 
Magennis, O'Hanlon, O'Hagan, MacMahon, McGuire, O'Quinn, 
O'Farrell, O'Reilly — at the head of their cohorts, staunch, wild- 
eyed, long repressed, burst from their fastnesses in the hills and 
the woods with one loud, long, strong, victory shout that might 
well have been heard by the straining exiles on the Continent — 
and in a few hours made Ulster their own again. Practically in 
one night they may be said to have reconquered their province, 
having sent the Planters scurrying into the few Ulster cities that 
they still could hold — Enniskillen, Derry, Coleraine, Belfast. Out- 
side these few places Ulster was Ireland's again, as far south as, 
and including, the city of Dundalk. And in a few days Phelim 
O'Neill was proclaimed head of a numerous Ulster army of 30,000 
men — of whom, however, two-thirds were, for want of arms, in- 
effective.^ 

It was Ulster only that had risen that night. The other quar- 
ters remained quiescent because of a miscarriage of plans. The 
seizing of Dublin Castle, which was to be their rising signal, was 
frustrated — through a traitor, Connelly. MacMahon and Mc- 
Guire who (with O' Moore) were to have taken the Castle, were 

2 Joy! joy the day is come at last, the day of hope and pride, 
And see! our crackling bonfires light old Banna's joyful tide, 
And gladsome bell, and bugle horn, from Inbhar's captured towers. 
Hark ! how they tell the Saxon swine, this land is ours, is ours ! 

Glory to God ! my eyes have seen the ransomed fields of Down, 
My ears have drunk the joyful news, "Stout Phelim hath his own." 
Oh ! may they see and hear no more, oh! may they rot to clay, 
Wlien they forget to triumph in the conquests of to-day. 

Now, now we'll teach the shameless Scot to purge his thievish maw, 
Now, now the courts may fall to pray, for justice is the law, 
Now shall the Undertaker square for once his loose accounts. 
We'll strike, brave boys, a fair result from all his fake amounts. 

Our standard flies o'er fifty towers, o'er twice ten thousand men ; 

Down have we plucked the pirate Red. never to rise again ; 

The Green alone shall stream above our native field and flood — 

The spotless Green, save where its folds are gemmed with Saxon blood! 



410 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

themselves taken. But O' Moore fortunately escaped. It was 
some months before Leinster and Munster took up arms for Ire- 
land. And later still when Connacht joined. 

For purpose, now, of inciting the English at home to wipe out 
the Irish — and thus provide more estates for the covetous in 
Britain, there was invented a story of a fearful massacre of almost 
all the Protestants of Ireland, on the night of the Rising. Not 
only did the eager English readily believe it, but after a while, 
the parties in Ireland who started the story almost came to be- 
lieve it themselves. And many thousands of good, sincere Irish 
Protestants, and many thousands of ardent English, to this day 
believe, the tale of a wild and indiscriminate massacre. So far 
went this effort to lay unbridled savagery at the doors of the Irish 
people, and so far succeeded, that many earnest and sincere his- 
torians, accepting 'the carefully prepared "facts" put upon record 
for the purpose, themselves believed, and through succeeding gen- 
erations and centuries perpetuated the memory of, "the great 
Popish Massacre." Many ludicrous estimates of the numbers of 
thousands and hundreds of thousands of Protestants massacred 
in Ulster on the night of 21st October, 1641, were, in succeeding 
decades, given to the world by both innocent and crafty English- 
men and Anglo-Irish. But it was left to the magnifying mind of 
the great Milton (when he was Cromwell's secretary) to give to 
Europe the astounding information that the savage Irish papists 
had massacred 610,000 Irish Protestants in the great massacre — 
a prodigious feat surely for the Papists, seeing that in all Ireland 
at that time, there were, as the English authorities afterwards ad- 
mitted, less than 200,000 Protestants altogether. 

The Rev. Ferdinand Warner, Protestant minister, in his "His- 
tory of the Irish Rebellion" written shortly after the event, says: 
"It is easy enough to demonstrate the falsehood of the relation of 
every English historian of the rebellion" — and he calculates that 
4,028 Protestants were killed within the first two years of the 
war, and 8,000 died of ill-usage. But the Cromwellian commis- 
sion appointed after the war to investigate all murders and in- 
Down from the sacred hills whereon a Saint communed with God, 
Up from the vale where Bagnall's blood manured the reeking sod, 
Out from the stately woods of Truagh, M'Kenna's plundered home, 
Like Malin's waves, as fierce and fast, our faithful clansmen come. 

Then, brethren, on ! — O'Neill's dear shade would frown to see our pause — 
Our banished Hugh, our martyred Hugh, he's watching o'er your cause — 
His gen'rous error lost the land — he deem'd the Norman true. 
Oh, forward ! friends, it must not lose the land again in you ! 

— Charles Gavan Duffv 



THE RISING OF 1641 411 

juries inflicted upon all the British settlers in Ireland, during the 
whole ten years' war — a commission animated by plenty of healthy 
prejudice, and eager to accept anything in the shape of evidence 
against the Irish — found 2,109 murders in the ten years of war. 
And it has been since shown that in this number the same murder, 
dressed up in various ways, was counted several times. ^ 

After the legend of "the great Popish Massacre" was once 
started it grew with the rapidity of a rolling snow-ball — till, at the 
hearings of the Commission ten years later, excited and imagina- 
tive witnesses, including Dr. Maxwell the Protestant rector of 
Tynan, made oath to the fantastic happenings which make those 
records a source of entertainment to the curious, ever since.^ 

Finally this long cherished and widely advertised great Popish 

3 The reports of the Lords Justices to the English Parhament, and other state 
documents of the end of October and beginning of November, ten to twelve days 
after "the massacre," make no mention of the tremendous killing — for the good 
reason that the clever propagandists who originated the idea, had not yet been 
inspired to its conception as a fine means of spurring English to the extirpation 
of the Irish — and quieting the conscience of Europe during the extirpation. 

In December the Lords Justices issued a commission to the Dean of Kilmore 
and seven other Protestant clergymen to make diligent inquiry about Protestants 
who were "robbed and plundered." There is no mention of any of them being 
murdered. 

Six days after the Rising, Lord Lieutenant Chichester wrote to the King: 
"They took four considerable towns, and have but killed one man." The Scot- 
tish settlers, in particular, were, strange to say, spared. One of the Irish proclama- 
tions of the time decreed the penalty of death to any native who should molest 
a Scotsman "in body, goods, or lands." The historian, Leland, says : "In the 
beginning of the rebellion it was determined by the Irish that the enterprise should 
be conducted in every quarter with as little bloodshed as possible." The Bishops' 
Synod at Kells in the following March condemned all acts of private vengeance 
and all who usurped other men's estates. And the Irish National Synod in May 
went so far as to issue a decree of excommunication against any such guilty one. 

* The Rev. Dr. Maxwell, Rector of Tynan (afterwards the Bishop of Kilmore), 
swore to apparitions, "by day and by night walking upon the river, sometimes 
brandishing their swords, sometimes singing psalms, and at times shrieking in a 
most fearful and hideous manner. I never heard any man so much as doubt the 
truth thereof." 

Catherine, the relict of William Coote, late of County Armagh, a carpenter 
"being duly sworn and examined, saith : About the twentieth December she saw 
the vision of a man stand upright in the river, with hands uplifted to heaven, etc., 
etc." The EngHsh army and her husband also saw it. The fervent ghost was 
standing in that trying position, testifieth said Deposition, "from the 20th Decem- 
ber to the end of Lent" ! 

Elizabeth, wife of Captain Price of Armagh, "deposeth and saith that she 
and other women went unto the aforesaid bridge at twilight in the evening, and 
saw a woman standing out of the water, waist high, crying out : 'Revenge ! 
Revenge!' Whereat this deponent and the rest, being touched to a strong amaze- 
ment and fright, walked from the place." Out of respect for the ghost they 
showed no indecent haste. 

The Rev. Mr. Creighton of Virginia, in Cavan, "deposeth that women brought 
into his house a young woman almost naked whom the rogues had attempted to 
kill. She had said: You can't kill me unless God gives you leave.' And al- 
though one, I think, ran his sword through her three times, she was not hurt— ie, 
being much confounded, went away." If the demonstration had not confounded 
him, we might well conclude that he was a difficult subject. 



412 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Massacre may be disposed of in the words of the zealous, old- 
time, Protestant historian. Rev. Dr. Taylor (in his "Civil Wars 
of Ireland") : "The Irish massacre of 1641 has been a phrase 
so often repeated even in books of education that one can scarcely 
conceal his surprise when he learns that the tale is apocryphal as 
the wildest fiction of romance," He also says : "The stories of 
massacre and of horrid cruelty were circulated in England because 
it was to the interest of the patriot party in Parliament to propa- 
gate such delusion." 

The Scottish troops and Scottish planters are on the other hand 
accused by the Irish of sallying out from Carrickfergus and driv- 
ing Irish women and children, variously estimated at 1,000 and 
at several thousand, to dreadful death over the fearful Gobbins 
cliffs on the peninsula called Island Magee.^ 

5 The present writer is unable to say how much truth, if any, is in this charge. 
The pro and con have been as hotly disputed as those of "the Great Popish 
Massacre." 

The singer of Ireland's woes and Ireland's joys, Ethna Carbery, believing the 
truth of it, sang a fierce song of it — 

BRIAN BOY MAGEE 

I am Brian Boy Magee — my father was Eoghan Ban — 

I was wakened from happy dreams by the shouts of my startled clan ; 

And I saw through the leaping glare that marked where our homestead stood, 

My mother swing by her hair — and my brothers lie in their blood. 

In the creepy cold of the night the pitiless wolves came down — 

Scotch troops from that Castle grim guarding Knockfergus Town ; 

And they hacked and lashed and hewed, with musket and rope and sword, 

Till my murdered kin lay thick in pools by the Slaughter Ford. 

I fought by my father's side, and when we were fighting sore 
We saw a line of their steel, with our shieking women before. 
Tlie red-coats drove them on to the verge of the Gobbins grey, 
Hurried them— God ! the sight ! as the sea foamed up for its prey. 

Oh, tall were the Gobbins cliflfs, and sharp were the rocks, my woe ! 
And tender the limbs that met such terrible death below ; 
Mother and babe and maid they clutched at the empty air. 
With eyeballs widened in fright, that hour of despair. 

(Sleep soft in your heaving bed. O little fair love of my heart! 
The bitter oath I have sworn shall be of my life a part; 
And for every piteous prayer you prayed on your way to die. 
May I hear an enemy plead while I laugh and deny.) 

In the dawn that was gold and red. ay, red as the blood-choked stream, 
I crept to the perilous brink— great Christ! was the night a dream? 
In all the Island of Gloom I only had life that day- 
Death covered the green hill-sides, and tossed in the Bay. 

I have vowed by the pride of my sires— by my mother's wandering ghost- 
By mv kinsfolk's shattered bones hurled on the cruel coast— 
Bv the sweet dead face of my love, and the wound in her gentle breast- 
To follow that murderous band, a sleuth-hound that knows no rest. 



THE RISING OF 1641 413 

The fearful cruelties perpetrated by Sir Charles Coote, leader 
of the English army in Leinster, and by St, Leger, English com- 
mander in Munster, it was, combined with fear for themselves and 
their estates, that at length drove the Anglo-Irish Catholic lords 
of the Pale and their fellows of Munster, leisurely to join in the 
Rebellion — after the great success in Ulster gave them confidence 
of a like success elsewhere. Connacht was for a much longer 
time restrained from casting its lot with the rest of Ireland — 
mainly through the influence of the leading and loyal Catholic 
lord there, Clanrickarde (British Deputy), the head of the Burke 
family. 

When the Lords Justices Parson and Borlase sent out Coote 
to ravage Wicklow he was ordered to spare none above a span 
high. And it is related by various historians that when his soldiers 
caught Irish babes upon their spears for sport, he said he "liked 
such frolics."^ 

The Irish army of Leinster securely held for Ireland almost 
all of that province except Dublin and a little radius around it, 
which Ormond and Coote were enabled to raid. Philip O'Dwyer 

I shall go to Phelim O'Neill with my sorrowful tale, and crave 
A blue-bright blade of Spain, in the ranks of his soldiers brave, 
And God grant me the strength to wield that shining avenger well — 
When the Gael shall sweep his foe through the yawning gates of Kell. 

I am Brian Boy Magee ! And my creed is a creed of hate ; 

Love, Peace. I have cast aside — but Vengeance, Vengeance I wait ! 

Till I pay back the four- fold, debt for the horrors I witnessed there, 

When my brothers moaned in their blood, and my mother swung by her hair. 

6 From Dublin, under date 25th February, 1642, the Government issued for 
the guidance of its generals, the very clear and explicit command, "to wound, 
kill, slay and destroy by all the ways and means you may. all the rebels and 
adherents and relievers ; and burn, spoil, waste, consume and demolish all places, 
towns and houses, where the said rebels are or have been relieved and harboured, 
and all hay and corn there, and kill and destroy all the men inhabiting, able to 
bear arms." (Carte's "Ormond.") 

Sir Charles Coote, typical of the English generals in this war, employed rack 
and dungeon and roasting to death, for appeasing of the turbulent natives. He 
stopped at nothing — even hanging women with child. 

Lord Qarendon, in his narrative of the events of the time, records how, after 
Coote plundered and burned the town of Clontarf, "he massacred townpeople, men, 
and women, and three suckling infants." And in that same week, says Qarendon. 
men, women and children of the village of Bullock frightened of the fate of 
Clontarf, went to sea to shun the fury of the soldiers who came from Dublin 
under Colonel Clifford. But being pursued by the soldiers in boats and over- 
taken, they were all thrown overboard — and drowned." 

Coote and Clifford were not better or worse than the average of the pacifiers 
of Ireland. One could quote here more instances of the blood-freezing kind than 
would fill a large book. But for our purpose one or two samples are as good 
as a thousand. Castlehaven sets down an incident characteristic of the humanity 
of the English troopers. He tells how Sir Arthur Loftus, Governor of Naas, 
marched out with a party of horse, and being joined by a party sent out by 
Ormond from Dublin : "They both together killed such of the Irish as they 



414 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

in the south had taken Cashel. And when the nobility arose there, 
they easily held the greater part of the province, driving St. 
Leger, the English Deputy, back into Cork. The greater part 
of Connacht was, soon after, under control of the Irish rebels. 

And when the great and historic Synod met in Kilkenny in May 
of '42, and nobility, gentry and lay leaders, foregathered with the 
ecclesiastics of the country, and formed the Confederation of 
Kilkenny, the Irish practically owne.d Ireland, English power 
merely clinging by its teeth to some outer corners of the country. 

met . . . but the most considerable slaughter occurred in a great strait of furze, 
situated on a hill, where the people of several villages had fled for shelter." Sir 
Arthur surrounded the hill, fired the furze, and at the point of the sword drove 
back into the_ flames the burning, men, women and children who" tried ta emerge — 
till the last child was burned to a crisp. Says Castlehaven in his Memoirs, "I 
saw the bodies — and the furze still burning." 

It should be particularly noted that the suckling infant sometimes aroused in 
the British soldiers the same blood-thirst that did the fighting rebel. The butcher- 
ing of infants was more diligently attended to during this period than in any 
previous or' subsequent English excursion through Ireland. It is matter of rec- 
ord that in the presence and with the toleration, of their officers — in at least one 
case with the hearty approval of a leader — the common soldiers engaged in the 
sport of tossing Irish babes upon their spears. The old English historian, Dt. 
Nalson, in his history of the Civil Wars (Introduction to his second volume) 
states — "I have heard a relation of my own, who was a' captain in that service (in 
Ireland) relate that . . . little children were promiscuously sufferers with the 
guilty, and that when any one who had some grains of compassion reprehended 
ihc soldiers for this unchristian inhumanity, they would scoffingly reply, 'Why? 
nils will be lice 1' and so despatch them." 



CHAPTER XLIX 

THE WAR OF THE 'FORTIES 

The Confederation of Kilkenny proved to be perhaps more of a 
curse than blessing to Ireland. The establishing of the Confed- 
eration was the establishing of a Parliament for Ireland. As, to 
please the Catholic Anglo-Irish (the "New Irish") lords and gen- 
try, the Confederation proclaimed its stand "for faith, country, 
and king'''' — meaning King Charles of England — so also to please 
the same party the susceptibilities of their king was supposed to 
be saved from hurt, by naming it a Confederation instead of a 
Parliament. 

In England Charles and his Parliamentary Government were 
now at bitter odds — beginning the great civil conflict there. Most 
of the Anglo-Irish, including all of the Catholic Anglo-Irish, 
espoused King Charles' cause. And though to appease his Puri- 
tan opponents he loudly proclaimed his hostility to popery, and 
refused to relax the anti-popery laws, the Catholic Anglo-Irish — 
whose affections for English royalty could seldom be shaken — 
held, not him, but the minions of the Parliamentary party, respon- 
sible for all of Ireland's woes. And they fostered the belief that 
Charles was a friend of Ireland and of the Catholic faith. It 
was the same absurd loyalty, which, crossing Ireland's national 
claims, was, for centuries before, handed down through all gen- 
erations of this particular portion of the Irish public. 

A portion of the Old Irish, the real Irish, now, as always, tak- 
ing this absurd loyalty by contagion, believed also in a crossed 
fealty. But the vast majority of these wasted no love and no rever- 
ence upon a foreign king who held them by force. Yet for unity's 
sake they yielded the point to the New Irish, and subscribed to 
the battle-cry "for faith, for country, and for king." 

The Confederation of Kilkenny then, which might have been 
a great blessing to Ireland, eventually proved to be Ireland's curse 
— in this, the country's greatest, fiercest struggle. Not entirely 
because the New Irish in it were given their way from the start; 
but more because a clique of the most unnational and reactionary 

415 



41 6 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

of them secured inside control — the control of the Supreme Coun- 
cil of the Confederation's General Assembly. 

Ormond, the head of the main branch of the Butler family, 
who was then the chief power in Ireland standing for King against 
Parliament, found this clique to be his ready tool — even though 
he was a bitter hater of popery and opponent of all concessions 
to popery. He was reared in England, a ward of the British Gov- 
ernment — reared Protestant, and imbued with the deepest animus 
against the religion to which the Butler family had hitherto clung. 
The President of the Supreme Council, Lord Mountgarrett, was 
kinsman to Ormond — being head of the Kilkenny family of the 
Butlers. Consequently, Ormond, while bitterly hating .Irishism 
and Catholicism, was able to work this Irish Catholic Parliament 
to his own and England's advantage. And through the cruel wars 
of the 'Forties the protest of the great majority of the Assembly 
who were truly Irish, and of the great bodies of truly Irish fight- 
ing men in the field, could but seldom counteract the prejudicial 
machinations of the Ormondite faction. 

When Father Peter Scarampi, envoy of the Pope, came there 
with moral and material help for the Irish rebels, the Ormondist, 
pro-British, faction quickly disgusted him, and put him on the side 
of the Irish Nationalists. And the same happened, when, in suc- 
cession to the env^oy came the Papal Nuncio, Rinuccini, who even- 
tually had to break openly with the Ormondist faction, leave them 
in disgust, .and denounce them. 

As matters got more and more critical for King Charles in 
Britain and his following there .lost power, he was more and more 
willing to court the Kilkenny Confederation through his repre- 
sentative Ormond. And the Kilkenny Supreme Council was al- 
ways eager to act the part of the willing coy maiden whenever 
Ormond whispered — even though his anti-Catholic bias made him 
presume to tone down each grudging little concession that his mas- 
ter would yield. They were again and again right heartily willing 
to accept from Charles bare toleration for their religion — without 
actual repeal of the anti-popery laws — and a mere modicum of 
their other liberties as Irishmen. As was ever the case with the 
New Irish, if their property and their religion were left unmolested 
they were tolerably content to be ruled by England as England 
wished. Now they were content to let England hold the Irish 
church lands for use of her foreign church, and hold Ireland In 
the fetters of Poyning's law.^ 

1 This famous (or infamous) law established the supremacy of the English 
Parliament over the Irish Parliament within the four seas of Ireland, forbidding 



THE WAR OF THE 'FORTIES 417 

The Supreme Council wasted the energies of Ireland and damp- 
ened the spirits of the fighters by years of futile negotiation with 
Ormond and his king, and practically threw away in a truce two 
valuable years of the middle 'Forties. And at times when they 
were pushed to positive action, they took action that was misguided. 
They never for an instant forgot that they, the Anglo-Irish, were 
the elect. Their forefathers had been set over the Old Irish, the 
mere Irish; and now the mere Irish — who were of course the bulk 
and backbone of this war — should be content to take a subordinate 
position in guiding the war. And armies of Old Irish, led by Old 
Irish generals, must not be permitted to take too much of the 
glory from their own pet Anglo-Irish commanders. 

Altogether their snobbery, their bias, and oftentimes their fool- 
ish trustingness — verging on stupidity — in Charles and his min- 
ions, combined to make a mess of Ireland's case, and to render 
fruitless long and sore years of struggle, which, without this Old 
Man of the Mountain upon the nation's neck, might have been 
crowned by complete success. 

They manacled, and thwarted, the great Irish figure of the 
'Forties, him who, but for them, could have been Ireland's saviour 
— the truly admirable man and signally great military leader, 
Owen Roe O'Neill. With Owen Roe's coming arose Ireland's 
bright star of hope — and with his passing, that star set. 

Owen Roe was a nephew of Hugh O'Neill, "Earl of Tyrone," 
who fled at the century's beginning, and had died abroad. Owen 
Roe was a young man at time of the Flight of the Earls, had 
fought in that last disastrous fight at Kinsale, and going abroad 
also, had won signal distinction as a military commander in the 
Spanish Netherlands — especially in his brilliant defence of Arras 
where he successfully held three armies at bay. He had never 
ceased to hope that he would yet be the means of freeing his 
Fatherland. And through the years in which his sword had been 
in the service of Spain, his heart was ever with Ireland. He came 
to his own North, when, close following its first bright burst the 
clouds of despair had come down, and begun to sit heavy on it 
again. 

For the Ulster army did not maintain its first successes. Its 
leader, Phelim O'Neill, was only a lawyer, not a military com- 
mander. After Ulster had been won for him, he wasted his army 

• 

the latter to begin legislating on any Irish subject without first getting permission 
from the former to do so, and giving the former absolute and unquestioned veto 
over every enactment of the latter — thus making the Irish "Parliament" an Irish 
farce. 



4i8 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

sitting long before Drogheda, which, without siege guns, he could 
not take. And when eventually he raised the siege, and faced an 
enemy army that had been forming in the North, his own wasted 
force was not only defeated, but almost wiped out. Then were 
the Irish of Ulster overwhelmed with despair, and considering 
making the best of the bad terms which they could now get from 
the enemy, when suddenly, from the Boyne to the sea, the province 
quivered with a magic thrill as from mouth to mouth was passed 
the word "Owen Roe is come!"~ 

On the 6th July, 1642, with a hundred officers in his company, 
the long-wished for saviour stepped off a ship at the old castle of 
MacSwiney, at Doe, in the North of Donegal. At Charlemont 
he was given command of the Northern army — the little that was 
left of it. And he proceeded at once to build it up, and train it 
into fighting form. So potent was the name and fame of Owen 
Roe that even while his army was still in embryo, Lord Levin, 
from Scotland, at the head of twenty thousand men refused to 
meet such a formidable battler and strategist. 

Though the name of O'Neill helped to keep the enemy at bay 
while he built up his army and trained them on the plateau of 
Southern Leitrim — from which he made an occasional sally to 
whip some body of the enemy, and refresh their respect for him 
— the Supreme Council at Kilkenny, jealous of the popularity of 

2 THE COMING OF OWEN ROE 

Ho ! Phelim, rouse your sorrowing soul, aiid raise your head once more ! 
Glad news, glad news for aching hearts comes from the northern shore ! 
Magennis and Maguire, come each from out your 'leagured tower, 
And spit upon their Saxon laws — defy their Saxon power! 
O'Reilly and O'Hanlon come into the light of day ! 

Come forth, come forth, and chase the gloom that wraps your souls away ! 
Ho ! fling the Sunburst to the winds — sound trumpet loud, and drum ! 
Ho ! ring thy echoes, Ulster, out, Owen Roe, Owen Roe is come ! 

To North and South, to East and West, speed with the joyous news, 

Press Heaven's own winds into your cause the tidings to diffuse ; 

On, on, o'er mountain, moor, and march — through wood, and brake, and fell — 

On, on, as though pursued by all the vengeful powers of hell ! 

On, on, nor sleep, nor bait, nor pause, till starts from sleep the land. 

And hope has gleamed in every heart, and steel in every hand. 

And eyes are fired that erst shone meek, and tongues loosed that were dumb — 

Till Heaven is rent with thunders of Owen Roe, Owen Roe is come I 

Ho ! proud and haughty Sassenach, look to your powder now ! 
Look to your spoils, O robber ! for, sore need you have, I trow ; 
Look to your lives ye sleuth-hounds false! for naught shall us withstand. 
Since Owen Roe, our own beloved, with Vengeance is at hand ; 
Ho! Saxons, tyrants, spoilers, by Liffey, Foyle, or Maigue, 
Where'er you're found, Owen's heavy hand shall scourge ye as a plague ! 
Oh, hellish memories steel our hearts, our mercy-sense benumb ! 
Up Gaels ! Up Gaels ! Revenge ! Revenge ! Owen Roe, Owen Roe is come ! 

— Seumas MacManus. 



THE WAR OF THE 'FORTIES 419 

the great Irishman, sometimes stooped to hamper when they should 
have helped him, and at length went so far as to slight and curb 
him by appointing over him as commander in chief, one of their 
own, Lord Castlehaven. But Owen Roe went steadily forward 
with the work that lay to his hand. And in June '46 fought and 
won his great pitched battle, the famous victory of Benburb. Here 
he met and smashed the Scottish General Monroe, who then held 
the British command in Ulster. 

In this battle, O'Neill had five thousand men and no artillery 
whatsoever. Monroe had six thousand men and a good field of 
artillery. Monroe took position in the angle formed by the junc- 
tion of the River Oonah and the Black Water, adjacent to the 
village of Benburb. He drew up his army that morning, with five 
divisions on the front line and four divisions in the second line. 
O'Neill's seven divisions were placed, four in the first line and 
three supporting divisions behind. Monroe awaited the attack. 
His men were fresh, and he had the sun In his favor. O'Neill, 
who had sent his cavalry northward to intercept assistance coming 
thence to his enemy, took pains to disappoint Monroe, and to 
keep his nerves and the nerves of his troops on edge for many 
mortal hours, while he merely engaged in skirmishing. By these 
tactics he not only got the accession of his cavalry (after their 
successful Northern sally) and tired out Monroe's army, but he 
also got the westering sun In their eyes. Then, everything being 
favourable, he gave the word, "Sancta Maria 1" and in the name 
of the Trinity launched an Impetuous whirlwind attack of such 
mighty momentum that nothing could withstand it. His cavalry 
captured the enemy's guns. His infantry overswept and over- 
whelmed the legions of Monroe, cut most of them down in masses, 
and hurled the remainder into the river — in one brief hour wip- 
ing out a splendid and well-equipped army that had been the hope 
of the British in Ulster! 

Thirty-two standards were taken. Lord Ardes, with thirty- 
two Scottish officers were captured. Cannon, baggage, two months' 
provisions, and 1,500 draft horses were bagged; 3,300 of the 
enemy lay dead on the field. Many more were drowned In the 
river and killed in the pursuit. While Owen Roe's loss was seventy 
men killed and a hundred wounded. 

All remaining Scottish forces were, by this signal victory, sent 
scurrying into the two strongholds of Derry and Carrickfergus. 
The province was Owen Roe's and Ireland's ! 

So would the whole country soon have been — but unfortunately, 
the Supreme Council, flinging away the golden opportunity, not 



420 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

only signed a peace with Ormond, acting for King Charles, but 
went so far as to put under his command all of the Confederate 
Catholic Army. 

It Is little wonder that Nuncio Rinuccini and the Bishops rose 
up against such traitorous peace — and went so far as to excom- 
municate the traitorous peacemakers. Owen Roe hurried south 
with his forces to overawe the traitors, and try to counteract the 
harm they had done. In the south with an army Avhose numbers 
had now mounted to 12,000 (including 1500 horse) he was joined 
by General Preston and his southern Catholic army. Preston, 
nice Owen Roe himself, had served his military apprenticeship, and 
won well-deserved fame for himself on the Continent. He had 
landed at Wexford two months after Owen Roe had landed In 
Donegal — and, as he was of the New Irish, he was given by the 
Confederacy a southern command. The united forces of these 
two able commanders might well have counteracted the ill-effect 
of the unworthy peace proclaimed by the Supreme Council. But 
the ferment of the Old Irish and New Irish jealousy was at work 
even in the combined forces. And on top of this, O'Neill discov- 
ered that Preston was being tampered with by the Ormond fac- 
tion. And Ormond was trying to negotiate a peace with him. 
So he rose up and went north with his army again. And the vic- 
tory that had seemed almost within Ireland's reach, was snatched 
away once more. 

The progress of events for the ensuing couple of years, to 
the coming of Cromwell, was puzzllngly kaleidoscopic in effect. 
And probably never before or since was there such an interminable 
tangle In the political affairs of any nation. There were half a 
dozen distinct parties and as many distinct armies rending the Na- 
tional fabric — the Old Irish Nationalists, the New Irish Nation- 
alists, the New Irish Royalists (for Charles), the Anglo-Irish 
Parliamentarians, the Scoto-Irish Royalists, and the Scoto-Irish 
Parliamentarians. These many parties were uniting in all sorts of 
odd combinations, and dividing along the most unlocked for lines. 
Although the Parliamentarians In Britain steadily treated all sec- 
tions of Irish as If they were, not humans but beasts,^ each of the 



3 Captain Swanky in '44 seized a ship that was carrying loyalist troops from 
Galway to Bristol, picked out from amongst them seventy whom he considered to 
be Irish, and threw them overboard. And the Journal of the English House of 
Commons for June of that year records — "Captain Swanley was called into the 
House of Commons and thanks given to him for his good service, and a chain 
of gold of two hundred pounds in value." 

In pursuance of the same admirable policy, Napier in his "Life of Montrose" 
tells us that, in Scotland, in one day, eighty Irish women and children were th-rown 
over a bridge, and drowned. 



THE WAR OF THE 'FORTIES 421 

two sections of the Irish at times united with the bitterest of the 
anti-Irish to fight the other. 

But, every move made by Owen Roe, and every combination, 
was wisely directed toward the great end. At one time, in the 
summer of '48 he was bravely standing against the five armies of 
five other parties that moved in unison against him. And against 
all five this magnificent general was able not merely to hold the 
field, but to march south to Kilkenny with 10,000 men — and from 
there in safety return to his camp at Belturbet again. From time 
to time during these years, while he stood like a rock defying the 
storm, he saw one after another of the Catholic commands dis- 
astrously defeated, and almost annihilated. He saw the Nuncio 
temporarily turn against him, himself declared a rebel, and out 
of the range of pardon, by the Confederation! 

Yet the noble man held steadily to his task, and when eventu- 
ally Cromwell came like an avenging angel Owen Roe was the 
one great commanding figure to which the awed and wasted nation 
instinctively turned. 

But, as by God's will it proved, their turning to him was in 
vain. 



Clarendon says that when the Earl of Warwick captured Irish frigates he 
"used to tie the Irish sailors back to back, and fling them into the sea." 



CHAPTER L 

CROMWELL 

For, Owen Roe, the hope of Ireland, was not destined to stay the 
bloody whirlwind that now entered Ireland for its final devasta- 
tion. In face of the fearful disaster that threatened in the com- 
ing of Cromwell, Owen Roe not only brought himself to league 
with the abhorrent Ormond, but, with characteristic nobility, he, 
one of the great military leaders of the era, agreed to subordinate 
himself and his army to Ormond's supreme command. 

But on his way south to join Ormond he fell ill in Cavan, and 
died — to the heartrending sorrow of a woe-stricken nation. 
As they poisoned Red Hugh O'Donnell in Spain, a short time be- 
fore, the English are accused of poisoning this man whose fight- 
ing qualities they feared. One of their agents is said to have pre- 
sented him with a pair of poisoned slippers at a ball which he at- 
tended in Derry on the eve of his starting south. ^ 

1 LAMENT FOR THE DEATH OF EOGHAN RUADH O'NEILL 

"Did they dare, did they dare to slay Eoghan Ruadh O'Neill?" 
"Yes, they slew with poison him they feared to meet with steel." 
"May God wither up their hearts! May their blood cease to flowl 
May they walk in living death, who poisoned Eoghan Ruadh ! 

"Though it break my heart to hear, say again the bitter words." 
"From Derry, against Cromwell, he marched to measure swords ; 
But the weapon of the Sassanach met him on his way, 
And he died at Cloch Uachtar, upon St. Leonard's Day." 

"Wail, wail, ye for the Mighty One ! Wail, wail ye for the dead ; 
Quench the hearth, and hold the breath, with ashes strew the head. 
How tenderly we loved him ! How deeply we deplore ! 
Holy Saviour ! but to think we shall never see him more 1 

"Sagest in the council was he. kindest in the hall ; 
Sure we never won a battle — 'twas Eoghan won them all. 
Had he lived — had he lived — our dear country had been free; 
But he's dead, but he's dead, and 'tis slaves we'll ever be. 

"O'Farrell and Clanrickarde, Preston and Red Hugh, 
Audley and IilcMahon — ye are valiant, wise and true; 
But— what, what are ye all to our darling who is gone? 
The rudder of our ship was he, our castle's cornerstone! 

422 



CROMWELL 423 

The fine and well-trained army of Owen Roe, of which Or- 
mond is said to have been jealous, was, after the beloved leader's 
death, broken up, and distributed among various commands. 

Several months before Cromwell's coming the Papal Nuncio 
was declared a rebel by the General Assembly — and, utterly dis- 
gusted with the whole horde of Anglo-Irish Catholics whose pres- 
ence cursed the country, had shaken the dust of the country from 
his feet, and sailed from Galway. The General Assembly having 
reaped rich promises — and little else — from King Charles and 
Ormond, had in return humbly and dutifully laid Ireland at Charles' 
feet. His cause was henceforth their cause. 

It was in August of '40 that Cromwell landed in Dublin, with 
eight regiments of foot, six of horse, and several troops of dra- 
goons — in all seventeen thousand of the flower of the Puritan 
army. They were extraordinary men, his Ironsides — Bible-read- 
ing, psalm-singing soldiers of God — fearfully daring, fiercely fanat- 
ical, papist hating, looking on this land as being assigned to them 
the chosen people, by their God. And looking on the inhabitants 
as idol-worshipping Canaanites who were cursed of God, and to 
be extirpated by the sword. They came with minds inflamed by 
the lurid accounts of the "great Popish Massacre," which for 
some years now had been, by the Parliamentarians sedulously cir- 
culated among the English people." 

To keep the men's venom at the boiling point there were 
chosen to travel with the troops, and also to sail with the fleet, 
Puritan preachers of the Word distinguished for their almost de- 
moniacal hatred of the papistical Irish. Stephen Jerome, Hugh 

"Wail, wail him through the Island ! Weep, weep for our pride ! 
Would that on the battlefield, our gallant chief had died ! 
Weep the Victor of Beann-borb — weep him. young men and old ; 
Weep for him, ye women, your beautiful lies cold! 

"We thought you would not die. we were sure you would not go 
And leave us in our utmost need to Cromwell's cruel blow. 
Sheep without a shepherd when the snow shuts out the skj' — 
Oh! why did you leave us, Eoghan? why did you die?" 

— Thomas Davis. 

2 A sample of this literature is the pamphlet published in London in 1647 by 
a noted Puritan preacher (and writer) Nathaniel Ward: "I beg upon my hands 
and knees that the expedition against them (the Irish) be undertaken while the 
hearts and hands of our soldiery are hot ; to whome, I will be bold to say, i)riefly : 
happy be he that shall reward them as they served us, and cursed be he who 
shall do the work of the Lord negligently. Cursed be he who holdeth back the 
sword from blood : yea cursed be he that maketh not the sword stark drunk with 
Irish blood ; wlio doth not recompense them double for their treachery to the 
English ; but maketh them in heaps on heaps, and their country the dwelling place 
of dragons — an astonishinent for nations. Let not that eye look for pity, nor 
hand be spared, that pities or spares them; and let him be cursed that curseth 
them not bitterly." 



424 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Peters, and their like, noted for the violence of their invective 
against all things Irish and Catholic, preached a war of extermina- 
tion in the most startling and fearful manner — in the pulpit in- 
voking the curse of God upon those who should hold their hands 
from slaying "while man, woman or child of Belial remains alive." 
Peters exhorted his hearers to do as did the conquerors of Jericho, 
"kill all that were, young men and old, children, and maidens." 

The great leader of the grim Ironsides, himself, was destined 
to leave behind him in Ireland for all time a name synonymous 
with ruthless butchery.^ 

The first rare taste of the qualities of this agent of God the 
Just, and first Friend of the Irish was given to the people at Dro- 
gheda. When he took this city he gave it and its inhabitants to 
his men for a three days' and three nights' unending orgy of slaugh- 
ter. Only thirty men out of a garrison of three thousand escaped 
the sword; and it is impossible to compute what other thousands 
of non-combatants, men, women, and children, were butchered. 
They were slain in the streets, in the lanes, in the yards, in the 
gardens, in the cellars, on their own hearthstone. They were slain 
in the church tower to which they fled for refuge, in the churches, 
on the altar steps, in the market-place — till the city's gutters 
ran with red rivulets of blood. In the vaults underneath the 
church a great number of the finest women of the city sought 
refuge. But hardly one, if one, even of these, was left to tell the 
awful tale of unspeakable outrage and murder.' 

In his despatch to the Speaker of the House of Commons, 

2 No more illuminating light could be thrown upon the extraordinary attitude 
adopted by Britain toward Ireland, through all the centuries, than to quote here 
the sentiments of the great Englishman Carlyle upon the coldest-blooded butcher 
of all the many butchers by whom Ireland has been in seven centuries afflicted : 
"Oliver Cromwell came as a soldier of God the Just, terrible as Death, relentless 
as Doom doing God's judgments on the enemies of God. ... It was the first 
King's face that poor Ireland ever saw, the first Friend's face." Since thus spoke 
one of the very great and noble of the English people, there is no reason for 
being astonished at the attitude toward Ireland of the mass of the British people. 

4 Arthur Wood, the Historian of Oxford, gives us a narrative compiled from 
the account of his brother who was an oflicer in Cromwell's army, and who had 
been through the siege and sack of Drogheda — which throws interesting sidelight 
upon the British methods, and the quaint point of view of the most cultured of 
them. "Each of the assailants would take up a child and use it as a buckler of 
defence to keep him from being shot or brained. After they had killed all in the 
church they went into tlie vaults underneath, where all the choicest of women had 
hid themselves. One of these, a most handsome virgin, arrayed in costly and 
gorgeous apparel, knelt down to Wood, with tears and prayers begging for her 
life; and being stricken with a profound pity, he did take her under his arm for 
I)rotection, and went with her out of the church with intention to put her over 
tlie works, to shift for herself, but a soldier, perceiving his intention, ran the 
sword through her, whereupon Mr. Wood, seeing her gasping, took away her money, 
jewels, etc., and flung her down over the works." 



CROMWELL 425 

after Drogheda, Cromwell says: "It has pleased God to bless 
our endeavour at Drogheda . . . the enemy were about 3,000 
strong in the town. I believe we put to the sword the whole num- 
ber. . . . This hath been a marvelous great mercy. ... I 
wish that all honest hearts may give the glory of this to God alone, 
to whom indeed the praise of this mercy belongs." And again, 
"In this very place (St. Peter's Church), a thousand of them were 
put to the sword, fleeing thither for safety. . . . And now give 
me leave to say how this work was wrought. It was set upon some 
of our hearts that a great thing should be done, not by power or 
might, but by the spirit of God. And is it not so, clearly?" 

On October 2, 1649, the English Parliament appointed a na- 
tional Thanksgiving Day in celebration of the dreadful slaughter 
— and by unanimous vote placed upon the Parliamentary records 
— "That the House does approve of the execution done at Dro- 
gheda as an act of both justice to them [the butchered ones] and 
mercy to others who may be warned by it." 

After Drogheda, Cromwell, in quick succession reduced the 
other northern strongholds, then turned and swept southward to 
Wexford — where he again exhibited to the people the face of the 
King and Friend. Two thousand were butchered here. He 
thought it a simple act of justice to "the Saints," his soldiers, to 
indulge them in the little joy of slaughtering the Canaanites. He 
writes: "I thought it not right or good to restrain off the soldiers 
from their right of pillage, or from doing execution on the enemy." 

Llngard, in his History of England says: "Wexford was 
abandoned to the mercy of the assailants. The tragedy recently 
enacted at Drogheda was renewed. No distinction was made be- 
tween the defenceless inhabitants and the armed soldiers, nor 
could the shrieks and prayers of three hundred females who had 
gathered round the great Cross in the market-place, preserve them 
from the swords of these ruthless barbarians. "° 

Cromwell reduced the garrisons of Arklow, Inniscorthy and 
Ross on the way to Wexford. After Wexford he tried to reduce 
Waterford, but failing in his first attempt, and not having time to 

5 Nicholas French, Bishop of Wexford who escaped from the city, and after 
terrible suffering and privation, escaped from the country, records : "On that fatal 
day, October 11th, 1649, I lost everything I had. Wexford, my native town, then 
abounding in merchiindise, ships, and wealth, was taken at the sword's point by 
Cromwell, and sacked by an infuriated soldiery. Before God's altar fell sacred 
victims, holy priests of the Lord. Of those who were seized outside the church 
some were scourged, some thrown into chains and imprisoned, while others were 
hanged or put to death by cruel tortures. The blood of the noblest of our citizens 
was shed so that it inundated the streets. There was hardly a house that was not 
defiled with carnage and filled with wailing." 



426 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

waste besieging it, passed onward — and found the cities of Cork 
an easy prey. For, as Lord Inchiquin had garrisoned them with 
EngHsh Protestants, these garrisons readily sold the cities — and 
were later well rewarded with large grants of Irish lands in the 
North. He rested at Youghal, getting fresh supplies and money 
from England. In January he took the field again, reduced Feth- 
ard, Cashel, Carrick, and eventually got Kilkenny by negotiation. 

Against his new and powerful cannon, the ancient and crum- 
bling defences of the Irish cities were of little avail. 

Perhaps the pluckiest fight put up against Cromwell was by 
Hugh O'Neill (nephew to Owen Roe) at Clonmel. With his little 
garrison of 1500 men he resisted magnificently. He quickly 
turned to splendid advantage a treacherous trick by which Crom- 
well was to be given entrance to the city — and quietly turning the 
tables, entrapped, fought and killed, five hundred of Cromwell's 
men. So finely did O'Neill defend the place that Cromwell had 
at length to turn the siege into a blockade. Then O'Neill, being 
out of provisions, worked a second clever bit of strategy. With 
the garrison, he secretly slipped away in the night to Waterford, 
after having arranged that when he and his forces had got twelve 
miles' start, the Mayor of the town should obtain good terms from 
the impatient and unwitting Cromwell. And, as anticipated, Crom- 
well was taken in, and eagerly gave fine terms to a town that, 
without his knowing it, was completely at his mercy. 

The conqueror then — in the end of May — sailed from Youghal 
for England, after having in eight months, subdued almost all of 
Ireland, destroyed the effective Irish forces, and left the country 
prostrate at the feet of the Parliament. Swiftly, terribly, and 
effectively he had done his fearful work — "a very handsome spell 
of work," says the great minded Carlyle.*' 

6 A few sidelights on the "handsome spell of work" (out of thousands which 
happened) : 

At Cashel, where two thousand were slain, Cromwell's general, Broghill, took 
the Bishop of Ross, cut off his hands and feet, and then hanged him. A Domini- 
can friar had his fingers and toes cut off before he was slain. And at Clonmel, a 
Franciscan was first drawn on the rack and then had his hands and feet burned 
off, after which he was hung. The parish priest of Arklow was tied to a wild 
horse's tail and dragged to Gorey, where he was hanged. 

The attitude adopted by the exterminators towards those whom they were 
exterminating, is illumined to us when we know that the most wildly grotesque 
stories told of the latter, were greedily accepted by the former. In Nash's edition 
of the HudibraSi it was gravely stated that when seven hundred Irish had been 
put to the sword by Inchiquin, "Among them were found, when stripped divers 
that had tails nearly a quarter of a yard long. Forty soldiers, eye-witnesses, 
testified the same on their oaths." A Protestant minister with the troops in Mun- 
ster wrote home to London that when they had stormed a certain castle, many 
of the slain defenders were found to have tails several inches long! 



CROMWELL 427 

He left in command his general, Ireton, who, on his death soon 
after, was to be succeeded by Cromwell's son, Henry. 

It took his successors, however, another two years to finish 
up the remnant of work that he had left unfinished. 

Waterford, Limerick, and Galway still held out. Scattered 
bands of fighters here and there, and an army of the North, about 
five thousand foot and a thousand horse, under Heber MacMahon, 
Bishop of Clogher, kept Ulster resistance still alive. 

But MacMahon, very little of a military man, though he swept 
the enemy before him at Toome, at Dungannon and Dungiven, 
was disastrously defeated near Letterkenny — when he had per- 
sisted in engaging the enemy under disadvantageous circumstances, 
and against the pleadings of military counsellers. There he lost 
half his army, and with the remnanl of it was overcome at Ennis- 
killen. He was hanged, and his, head set above Derry gate, as a 
warning to "traitors" — the^.term always applied by Englishmen 
to such Irish as perversely persist in doing their duty by their 
own country instead of their country's conqueror. 

The few towns — Waterford, Limerick, Galway^ — and the 
scattered fighting forces were gradually conquered, or capitulated. 
Till on the 12th May, '52, Articles of Kilkenny signed by the Par- 
liamentary Commissioners on the one hand and the Earl of West 
Meath on the other — yet fiercely denounced by the Leinster clergy 
— practically terminated the longest, the most appallingly dreadful 
and inhumane, and the most exhausting, war, with which unfor- 
tunate Ireland was ever visited. 

^ One of Galway's gallant defenders, a young man, Geoffrey Baron, condemned 
to the scaffold by the conquerors — for the same crime for which through the ages 
since, other thousands of Ireland's young men have made sacred to us the gal- 
lows steps — asked and was permitted to dress for his execution. He went to his 
room, chose from his wardrobe a suit of white taffetie, and, so garbed, joyously 
climbed the gallows stairs and went to his death for Ireland. 

Incidentally, let it be here set down that on the day these lines are being penned 
I lift the newspaper, read a report of six young men — '"rebels" — just hanged in 
Cork, and of the chaplain. Canon O'Sullivan's announcement, "They went to their 
death like school-boys going on a holiday." 

The centuries roll on, the struggle grows ancient, but the spirit, proud, glad, 
indomitable, weakens not, nor changes ever. 



CHAPTER LI 

THE CROMWELLIAN SETTLEMENT 

But Ireland's sufferings; great and terrible as they had been, were 
yet far from ended. True, she had quaffed her chalice to the last 
bitter drop, but it was ordained that she must now lap up the 
poisoned dregs. 

Peace had been proclaimed ever the torn land. But peace is 
a bitterly ironical term to apply to ♦■]:i'? state of things in Ireland 
now. This may well be realised by reading any description of life 
in Ireland during these years. Hear this description of a place in 
time of "peace" — taken from Lynch's "Life of BisKop Kirwan" : 

"Along with the three scourges of God, famine, plague, and 
war, there was another which some called the fourth scourge, to 
wit, the weekly exaction of the soldiers' pay, which was extorted 
with incredible atrocity, each Saturday — bugles sounding, and drums 
beating. On these occasions the soldiers entered the various houses, 
and pointing their muskets to the breasts of men and women threat- 
ened them wnth instant death if the sum demanded was not imme- 
diately given. Should it have so happened that the continual pay- 
ment of these taxes had exhausted the means of the people, bed, 
bedding, sheets, table-cloths, dishes, and every description of furni- 
ture, nay, the very garments of the women, torn off their persons, 
were carried to the market-place and sold for a small sum; so much 
so, that each recurring Saturday bore a resemblance to the Day of 
Judgment, and the clangour of the trumpet smote the people with 
terror, almost equal to that of doomsday." 

When the wars were ended and "peace" had been established 
then was the exhausted remnant of the nation condemned to shoul- 
der its bitter burden — slavery worse than death, and a terrible 
exile, worse than either — the transplanting of all of the Irish race 
who were still alive, in Ulster, Leinster and Munster, to the bar- 
ren bogs of Connacht; so that the smiling fields of the fertile 
three-quarters of Ireland might be divided among the children of 
the conqueror. It was the great Cromwellian Settlement. 

428 



THE CROMWELLIAN SETTLEMENT 429 

One of the articles of the peace provided that the Irish sol- 
diers could, if they would, enter the army of any foreign power 
friendly to England. Thirty-five hundred of them, under Colonel 
Edmund O'Dwyer, went to the Prince Conde; five thousand un- 
der Lord Muskerry, to the King of Poland; smaller numbers to 
other Continental armies; and about thirty thousand to the King 
of Spain. 

Because by far the greater portion of the Irish who were able 
to bear arms had been killed off, few young men now remained to 
Ireland. And of these few remaining young men, and of the 
young women and boys and girls, numbers were, during the fol- 
lowing years shipped into slavery to the American colonies and 
the West Indies,^ The numbers thus sent to slavery are variously 
estimated at between thirty thousand and eighty thousand. - 

On the Continent, in almost every country, the exiled Irish 
came in course of time to adorn all ranks and all classes. One 
historian says, "They became Chancellors of Universities, profes- 
sors and high officials in every European state. A Kerryman was 

1 There is a tradition that, as a result, on some of the smaller islands of the 
West Indies up till a little more than a century ago, the negroes still spoke 
Gaelic. 

2 Prendergast in his "Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland" names four Bristol 
merchants who were the most active of the slave trading agents. For illustrating 
the formal legal way in which the horror was commercialised Prendergast quotes 
"one instance out of many"-^the case of Captain John Vernon, who as agent of 
the English Commissioners (who then governed Ireland) contracted "under his 
hand, of date 14th September, 1653" with Messrs. Sellick and Leader of Bristol 
to supply them with two hundred and fifty women of the Irish nation above twelve 
and under forty-five years of age. Also three hundred men between twelve years 
and forty-five years of age. 

Following the conquest of Jamaica in 1655, after thousands of the Irish had, 
through years before, been shipped into slavery, the Governor of that island asked 
for a thousand girls from Ireland to be shipped there — to the most appalling kind 
of slavery. 

Secretary Thurloe's Correspondence, Vol. 4, gives Henry Cromwell's reply to 
this modest request — in his letter of September 11, 1655: 

'"Concerninge the younge women, although we must use force in takeinge them 
up. yet it beinge so much for their owne goode and likely to be of soe great ad- 
vantage to the publique, it is not in the least doubted you may have such number 
of them as you thinke fitt to make use upon this account. ... I desire to express 
as much zeal in this design as you would wish, and shall be as diligent in prose- 
quution of any directiones . . . judgeinge it to be business of publique concern- 
ment. . . . Blessed be God, I do not finde many discouragements in my worke, and 
hope I shall not, soe longe as the Lord is pleased to keep my harte uprighte be- 
fore him." 

And under date of September 18, 1655, Henry of the Uprighte Harte, writ- 
ing from Kilkenny, again to Thurloe, says in the course of his letter, "I shall not 
neede to repeat anythinge about the girles, not doubtinge but to answer your ex- 
pectationes to the full in that ; and I think it might be of like advantage to your 
afi^aires there, and to ours heer, if you should thinke fitt to sende 1500 or 2000 
young boys of from twelve to fourteen years of age, to the place aforementioned. 
We could well spare them, and they would be of use to you ; and who knowes 
but that it may be the meanes to make them Englishmen, I mean rather Qiristians." 

Comment upon this — especially the final pithy sentence — would surely spoil it. 



430 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

physician to Sobieski, King of Poland. A Kerryman was con- 
fessor to the Queen of Portugal, and was sent by the King on an 
embassy to Louis the Fourteenth. A Donegal man named O'Gla- 
can was physician and Privy Chancellor to the King of France, 
and a very famed professor of medicine in the Universities of 
Tolouse and Bologna." 

"There was not a country in Europe, and not an occupation, 
where Irishmen were not in the first rank — as Fieldmarshals, Ad- 
mirals, Ambassadors, Prime Ministers, Scholars, Physicians, Mer- 
chants, Soldiers, and Founders of mining industry." 

Of the fearful condition of Ireland now, Prendergast gives us 
a terrible picture; "Ireland, in the language of Scripture, lay void 
as a wilderness. Five-sixths of her people had perished. Women 
and children were found daily perishing in ditches, starved. The 
bodies of many wandering orphans, whose fathers had been killed 
or exiled, and whose mothers had died of famine, were preyed 
upon by wolves. In the years 1652 and 1653 the plague, follow- 
ing the desolating wars, had swept away whole counties, so that 
one might travel twenty or thirty miles and not see a living crea- 
ture. Man, beast and bird were all dead, or had quit those deso- 
late places. The troops would tell stories of the place where they 
saw a smoke, it was so rare to see either smoke by day, or fire or 
candle by night. If two or three cabins were met with, there were 
found none but aged men, with women and children; and they, 
in the words of the prophet, 'became as a bottle in the smoke,' 
their skins black like an oven because of the terrible famine." 

In September, 1653, was issued by Parliament the order for 
the great transplanting. Then all the fertile fields of the Irish 
natives of Ireland were declared to be the property of the British 
soldiers who had won them by the sword, and of the English Ad- 
venturers who had purchased the sword and financed the expedi- 
tion into Ireland — and, under penalty of death, all the ancient 
inhabitants were ordered to repair themselves from the ends of 
Ireland to the wastes of Connacht, where their lot was to be laid 
henceforth. Under penalty of death, no Irish man, woman, or 
child, was to let himself, herself, itself, be found east of the River 
Shannon, after the ist May, 1654.^ 

3 Edward Hetlierington was hung from a tree near his own house while a 
placard struck upon his breast, and another upon his back, warned the rest of the 
Irish world that this was — "For not transplanting." 

Certain artisans and labourers who would be absolutely needed by the British 
Settlers were excluded from the edict of banishment. There was also a clause — 
evidently put in more for effect than for anything else — that people who could 
prove themselves innocent of having been rebels or having aided, harboured, or 



THE CROMWELLIAN SETTLEMENT 431 

To the countless thousands of weak, weary, and starving crea- 
tures — worn old men and women, and weakling babes — direct sen- 
tence of death would have been ten times more welcome and in- 
finitely more merciful. That was a fearful winter of '53-'54; 
fearful for the tottering old and the crawling young, who, from 
the four ends of Ireland were dragging their skeleton frames over 
the hills and the plains, and forcing themselves along every high- 
way that headed to the west, to deeper misery, more painful starva- 
tion, and slow and painful death. The Lord and the commoner, 
the palsied old man and the toddling orphan child, all alike were 
driven forth from their homes, and goaded over the blood-stained 
flints to their dread Siberia.* 

The Barony of Burren in Clare, to which the first batch of 
these unfortunates were consigned, was such a God-forsaken re- 
gion that it was popularly said to have not wood enough on which 
to hang a man, water enough to drown him, nor earth enough to 

sympathised with rebels, and who were guiltless of any offences against Britisih 
soldiers, settlers, or sympathisers, would be excluded from the edict of banishment. 
This was "a concession of mercy" to the Irish nation. And its value may be 
estimated by the fact that a fair-minded one of the British Settlers themselves, 
Vincent Gookin, in his Vindication of the Irish Transplanting, records his protest 
against "the narrowness and straightness of the Parliament's concessions of mercy 
to that nation which doth not declare one in five hundred pardonable either for 
life or estate." 

This same Vincent Gookin in endeavouring to show the vital necessity to the 
new colonists of holding back from banishment the working portion of the Irish 
people, sheds light for us upon the manual accomplishments of the common Irish 
worker then. And his testimony is valuable in view of the constant English as- 
sertion that the Irish were in a state verging on savagery (which, considering the 
circumstances, might well have been the case). Gookin says: "There are few of 
the Irish commonalty but are skilful in husbandry, and more exact than any of 
the English in the husbandry proper to the country. . . . There are few of the 
women but are skilful in dressing hemp and flax, and making of linen and woollen 
cloth. ... It is believed that to every hundred men there are five or six carpenters 
at least of that nation, and these more handy and ready in building ordinary 
houses, and more prudent in supplying the defects of instruments and materials, 
than English artificers." 

* From the Government records, Prendergast gives us samples of the official 
description of the migrating Irish, both the high brought low, and the lowly still 
lower : 

"Sir Nicholas Comyn of Limerick numb on one side of dead palsy, accom- 
panied only by his wife, Catherine, aged thirty-five, flaxen hair, of middle stature, 
and one maid servant, Honour MacNamara, aged twenty, brown hair, middle 
stature — having no substance." 

"Ignatius Stacpool of Limerick, orphant, eleven years of age, flaxen hair, 
full face, low of stature ; Catherine, his sister, orphant, age eight, flaxen hair, full 
face — having no substance." 

"James, Lord Dun Boyne in County Tipperary, describes himself as likely to 
be accompanied by twenty-one followers, and as having four cows, ten garans, and 
two swine." 

The grinding of the mills of the gods brought it around that among the mul- 
titude of poor creatures who, in pain and suffering, were now driven from Cork 
into exile, was the grandson of the poet Edmund Spenser, who in his time had 
driven forth the native Irish that he might enjoy the lands of which he robbed 
them. 



432 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

bury him. Beside it Siberia was Eden. And many of those con- 
signed to it returned to face death at the hands of the soldiers. 

And it is to be noted that even Connacht was not entirely left 
to them. For, not satisfied with obtaining the three more fertile 
quarters of Ireland, the covetous eyes of the British followed these 
creatures even across the Shannon — and the one fertile county of 
Connacht, Sligo, was filched from them, as well as many fruitful 
patches that God had granted to the remainder of Connacht. 

Sir William Petty, in his Political Anatomy of Ireland, esti- 
mated that the wars had reduced the population of Ireland from 
1,466,000 in '41 to 616,000 in '52 — so that much more than one- 
half of the population of the whole country had been at that time 
exterminated. And they were probably dying more thickly during 
the terrible transplanting — and in the years immediately after, 
when they were cooped up in Connacht, without houses, cattle, or 
implements of tillage, striving as it were to live on manna from 
heaven. 

Petty also tells us that, whereas before 1641 the British in 
Ireland were to the Irish as two to eleven, when the Cromwellian 
Settlement was effected, three-fourths of the lands, and five-sixths 
of the houses belonged to the British Settlers. And when Petty 
wrote, in '72 — after a period of twenty years' rest during which 
the exiled Irish had got some time to rehabilitate themselves — he 
records that three-fourths of the population existed upon milk and 
potatoes, and lived in cabins that had neither chimney, door, stairs, 
nor window — "So," exclaims Sir William, and we can see the 
pious and gallant Briton rub his hands for glee, "they will never 
rebel again." 

Now, as ever in Ireland, the gloom is illumined by a radiance 
behind. While things are at their blackest, the people, like driven 
animals, agonising most sorely, both learning and religion are 
still cherished — cherished not only by those cooped up in Con- 
nacht, but by the dispossessed who had remained hewers of wood 
and drawers of water for their dispossessors; and among the thou- 
sand who, escaping back from Connacht, were in every corner of 
the country insinuating themselves into its life once more. Keep- 
ing in mind that these creatures, under the terrible conditions pic- 
tured, were just clinging to a life of unparalleled hardship, it is 
something noteworthy and characteristic of the indomitable soul 
of the race, to find Petty testifying: "The superior learning 
among them is the philosophies of the schools and the genealogies 
of their ancestors — both which look like what St. Paul hath con- 



THE CROMWELLIAN SETTLEMENT 433 

demnedl" The superior Briton in Petty makes him set down the 
priests as having small learning. But he admits in the next breath : 
"They can often outtalk in Latin those who talk with them." 

It was shortly before this time that King James' Commis- 
sioners — the learned Protestant Primate, Archbishop Usher, sad 
to say, being one of them — suppressed the classical school con- 
ducted in Galway by John Lynch, the noted author of Cambrensis 
Eversus — praised it and suppressed it, and bound over Lynch in 
four hundred pounds "to forbear teaching," 

And cooped together in Connacht, or scattered fugitives, 
haunting the fields that had once been theirs, they clung to their 
religion too, with a perseverance that was sublime. Just before 
the Wars the people had been venturing, here and there, to bring 
their religion into the open. That good Puritan, Sir William 
Brereton, in the record of his journey in Ireland in 1635, ex- 
pressed himself shocked at the painful sight that met his eye at 
Dundalk — "wherein the Papists boldly dare to go to Mass openly." 
And wherever they were, there also, lurking todj was the hunted 
priest with price upon his head.^ 

O'Hagan (afterwards Chief Justice) in his Essay on Irish 
History cites one of the edicts of that time: "If any one shall 
know where a priest remains concealed, in caves, woods, or cav- 
erns, or if by any chance he should meet a priest on the highway, 
and not immediately take him into custody and present him before 
the next magistrate, such person is to be considered a traitor and 
an enemy of the Republic. He is accordingly to be cast into prison, 
flogged through the public streets and afterwards have his ears 
cut off. But should it appear that he kept up any correspondence 
or friendship with a priest, he is to suffer death." 

Both the perseverance of the people in their thirst for learn- 
ing and religion, and also the hard lot of the hunted priest, then. 



^ Here are a few sample disbursements taken from the Government records 
for 1657: 

"Five pounds to Thomas Gregson, Evan Powell, and Samuel Ally, to be 
equally divided upon them, for arresting a Popish priest, Donogh Hagerty, taken 
and now secured in the County jail at Clonmel." 

"To Lieutenant Edwin Wood, twenty-five pounds for five priests and three 
friars apprehended by him— namely, Thomas McGeoghan, Turlough MacGowan. 
Hugh Goan, Terence Fitzsimmons, and another — who on examination confessed 
themselves to be priests and friars." 

"To Humphrey Gibbs and to Corporal Thomas Hill ten pounds for appre- 
hending two Popish priests, namely, Maurice Prendergast and Edward Fahy." 

"To Arthur Spollen, Robert Pierce, and John Bruen, five pounds for their 
good service performed in apprehending and bringing before the Right Honourable 
Chief Justice Pepys on the twenty-first January last, one Popish priest, Edwin 
Duhy." 



434 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

is well pictured for us by a Jesuit, Father Quinn, who, in the early 
'fifties, in a Latin report, from Galway, made to his superiors in 
Rome (and preserved in St. Isidore's) writes: 

"On a spot of ground in the middle of an immense bog. Father 
James Forde constructed for himself a little hut, whither boys 
and youths came and still come to be instructed in the rudiments 
of learning, virtue, and faith. Then they go from house to house 
and teach parents and neighbours what they learnt in the bogs. 

"Our life is therefore daily warfare and living martyrdom. 
We never venture to approach any houses of Catholics, but live 
generally in the mountains, forests, and inaccessible bogs — where 
Cromwellian troopers can not reach us. Thither crowds of poor 
Catholics flock to us, whom we refresh by the Word of God and 
consolations of the Sacraments. Here in wild mountain tracts, we 
preach to them constancy in faith and the mystery of the Cross 
of Our Lord." In spite of all precaution taken for the secret ex- 
ercises, Cromwellians often discovered it: then the wild beast was 
never hunted with more fury, nor tracked with more pertinacity, 
through mountains, woods, and bogs, than the priest. 

"I cannot omit a lamentable incident which occurred here 
lately," says Father Quinn, "three hundred Catholics bound in 
chains, were carried to a desolate island — where they were aban- 
doned. All of them starved to death except two who swam away. 
One sank. One reached land." 

After the Puritan fury had expended itself, and the native 
Irish were everywhere mysteriously springing up again — out of 
the bowels of the earth as it seemed — we have interesting testi- 
mony of the rapid recovery of the race, and revival of its religion, 
from the French traveller Janvin de Rochefort, who went through 
Ireland in 1668. He found: "Even in Dublin more than twenty 
houses where Mass is secretly said, and in about a thousand places, 
subterranean vaults and retired spots in the woods." Spending 
a Sunday in Drogheda he was told he could hear Mass two miles 
outside the city — where he found it being celebrated in a poor 
chamber in a mean hamlet. He was astonished at the numbers he 
saw flocking through the woods and across the mountains to at- 
tend. And he adds: "Here I saw, before Mass, fifty who con- 
fessed and afterwards communicated with devotion truly Catho- 
lic." 

Like all the many other English attempts of the like kind, the 
Cromwellian Settlement did not settle — and the Cromwellian ex- 
tirpation did not extirpate — the perverse race. 



THE CROMWELLIAN SETTLEMENT 435 

For the wars of the Torties and CromwelHan Settlement see the following : 
Belling's History of the Irish Confederation. 
Meehan's Confederation of Kilkenny. 
Warner's History of the Rebellion. 
Carte's Life of the Duke of Ormond. 
Green's Short History of the English People. 
Lord Maguire's Narrative. 
Murphy's Cromwell in Ireland. 
Taylor's Life of Owen Roe. 
Leland's History of Ireland. 
Lingard's History of England. 



CHAPTER LII 

THE WILLIAMITE WARS 

When to England's throne and Ireland's governorship came 
James II (1685), his first act was to suspend the Penal Laws 
against Catholics and Dissenters — whereby he filled the majority of 
his English subjects and the Puritan settlers in Ireland with horror. 
Furthermore, he decided to effect a reform in the government of 
Ireland. 

So, he sent over Richard Talbot, later known in Irish history 
as the Duke of Tyrconnell. Talbot had been attached to King 
Charles's suite since the Restoration. He was an Irishman and a 
Catholic; "a large powerful-looking man, brilliant and handsome 
in his youth" says Gramont in his "Memoirs," "of nobility, not to 
say haughtiness in his manners." It was recorded of him that he 
always paid his debts. He was fifty years of age when the king 
chose him for the service. A tall cavalry officer of Irish birth, then 
in England, captain in Hamilton's dragoons by name Patrick Sars- 
field, held an opinion later that Tyrconnell lacked decision and 
boldness. 

However, on being appointed to the command of the army in 
Ireland, and in the following year to the Lord Lieutenancy, he 
showed no lack of decision. He had been at the sack of Drogheda, 
a boy of sixteen. That memory, and the king's cause to serve, 
caused him speedily to make a radical change in the army. The 
Puritan element was removed from the ranks; regiments were re- 
cruited from Irish Catholics; the Cromwellian officers were replaced 
by Irishmen. "I have put the sword in your hands," he is reported 
to have said to the Irish Privy Council; and the statement was true. 

He went further. The charters of the Corporations, all framed 
in favour of the foreigner, the English settler, were called in. He 
appointed Catholics as judges and magistrates, and placed Catholics 
on his Council. These mere acts of justice appeared crimes to the 
settlers. To complete his sins Tyrconnell sent three thousand 
Irish soldiers to England as a reinforcement for James's army. 
Their arrival was regarded with horror. The English believed 
them to be bloodthirsty banditti. 

436 



THE WILLIAMITE WARS 437 

From the Hague a man closely connected by birth and marriage 
with the king was watching in silence the march of events. A man 
with a high aquiline nose, a pale face, with light brown hair and 
penetrating eyes, asthmatic, a slender awkward figure, ungraceful, 
taciturn, fond of hunting. Agents began to pass between him and 
certain Englishmen. From Versailles Louis XIV watched him 
in turn. He bade his ambassador in London warn James against 
William of Orange. The warning was resented. Then, shortly 
after the birth of the Prince of Wales, the blow fell. 

William of Orange landed in England, and James's army 
melted away. His cause there became hopeless; the country went 
over to V/illiam. Deserted by relations and friends, James ordered 
his army to be disbanded. He then fled from London, and later 
to France. Some jokers, dressed as clow^ns, entered London and 
said the Irish regiments had seized their arms and were slaughtering 
all Protestants. The report was believed; a mad panic seized the 
citizens; alarm bells were rung; beacons kindled in the adjoining 
counties, and the night was known in England as the "Irish night." 
It was the 12th of December, 1688. Meanwhile the disbanded 
Irish soldiers were getting home as best they could. 

William knew men. He offered Sarsfield a colonelcy In his 
army, and his favour generally, if he would desert James and act as 
William's agent in Ireland. The colonelcy and the favour were 
spurned. It became evident now that the issue between James and 
William would be decided in Ireland. To some of the Irish, com- 
plete independence, with James for king, seemed a not impossible 
hope. 

As a body the Irish nation declared for him; the English 
settlers, Elizabethan and Cromwellian, for William. Tyrconnell 
at once set about strengthening the Irish army. He empowered 
the Catholic nobility and gentry to raise regiments. Foot and 
Horse were soon enrolled. Arms were deficient; for this reason 
many of the new levies were of little practical aid. 

Within the space of two months fifty thousand Irishmen enlisted 
themselves. These men were known as "Tyrconnell's blackguards" 
by the Williamites. Many were ragged; some half naked. Their 
fathers had been robbed of all; their oppressors just allowed them 
to exist. One of their enemies described their appearance. "Some 
had wisps of hay or straw bands about their heads instead of hats. 
Others tattered coats or blankets cast over them without any 
breeches. Stockings and shoes were strange things. As for shirts 
three proved a miracle. However, they mustered." To the cold, 
hostile eye they seemed but savages. But there was native learn- 



438 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

ing, and poetry, and wonderful oral tradition, wit, generosity, 
resource and clever brains among them in spite of the frightful 
poverty of their lives, and the grinding cruelties of their oppressors. 
They were the material which, later, drilled and armed, was to 
form the Irish Brigade in the service of France, and prove the best 
fighters in Europe. 

War, thus declared, Tyrconnell sent to France to Invite James 
to Ireland. He came. By a successful war here, he hoped to 
recover the crown of England. To him, Ireland was the pawn; 
England the prize. He brought gifts from Louis, gold, arms, and 
ammunition. He was accompanied by his illegitimate son, the 
Duke of Berwick, a boy of nineteen, and by four hundred French 
officers and gunners; Scotch and English Jacobites; and as Louis's 
agent and ambassador the Count d'Avaux. A Frenchman, de 
Rosen, was to command the army that was to advance on Derry 
held by the settlers; a man of fierce temper, with little ability. 
Another Frenchman, also of the party, was Bolsselaux, who proved 
his worth at Limerick, and with James came Patrick Sarsfield. 

The landing was at Kinsale. It was March 19th, 1689. Tyr- 
connell met James at Cork. He aroused foolish enthusiasm 
everywhere. All the way to Dublin he was greeted with acclama- 
tions of joy. Speeches were made, songs sung; young girls danced 
along the road. Men took off their serge coats and laid them in 
the mud before his horse's hoofs; women kissed him as the deliverer 
of the country. James bore the kisses for a short time; then 
ordered that no more kissers were to be allowed to approach him. 

Dublin showed the same delight. It was Palm Sunday when 
he entered the city. Embroidered cloths, silks, tapestries hung 
from windows; the streets were freshly gravelled; bells rang; royal 
salutes were fired. Next day he summoned a council. Five procla- 
mations were issued — one, for the summoning of a Parliament. 

His next act was to march against Williamite Derry. Negotia- 
tions had been opened with Lundy, who was in command of the 
defenders. Lundy stipulated that while these negotiations were 
going on the Irish army was to remain a distance of four miles 
from the city. De Rosen advised James to show himself in force 
before the walls. The army was set in motion. News reached 
the city; the 'prentice boys closed the gates in the king's face with 
shouts of "no surrender!" From that day Derry defended herself 
gallantly until she was relieved. It was one of the magnificently 
gallant defences of history. 

Disgusted at his reception, the king returned to Dublin. On 
the 7th of May the Parliament met. He opened it robed and 



THE WILLIAMITE WARS 439 

crowned.^ It was the first Parliament since the Parliament of the 
Pale had been established in the thirteenth century that represented 
the Irish nation. It is known as the Patriot Parliament. Its 
detractors then, as now, point to it as a specimen of what an Irish 
Government would be. "Unruly, rash, rapacious, and bloody'' 
they call it. 

James said he had come to venture his life in defence of Irish 
liberties and his own right. The nation, he promised, should 
flourish under his rule. Pie spoke to fifty-four peers and two hun- 
dred and twenty-four members of the Commons. Among the peers 
were Iveagh, Clare and Mountchashel, whose regiments after- 
wards, as part of the Irish Brigade in the service of France were 
to keep the name of Ireland before Europe. Among the seven 
prelates was Anthony Dopping, Protestant Bishop of Meath, who 
led the opposition, and who, after the last siege of Limerick, urged 
in a sermon, the Lord Justices to break the Treaty they had signed. 

The Parliament passed in all thirty-five Acts with due deliber- 
ation and the advice of counsel. T he most memorable are : — The 
Act that declared the Parliament of England could not bind Ireland, 
or that writs or errors of appeal, or the removing of judgments, 
decrees, and sentences given in Ireland could not be brought to 
England: The Act for the repeal of the Act of Settlement that 
had confirmed the Cromwellian settlers in their possession of the 
lands they had seized: The Act for liberty of conscience which 
repealed "such acts or clauses in any Act of Parliament which was 
inconsistent with the same"; The Act relating to the army, and the 
one dealing with the payment of tithes. 

The Act of supply for the army is remarkable for its equity 
in the distribution of the tax. It empowered the king to raise 
£20,000 pounds a month by land tax distributed over the counties 
and towns according to their abilities, the two rebellious counties, 
Derry and Fermanagh, receiving no heavier tax than the others. 
It provided against the oppression of the tenant, as "in these dis- 
tracted times," it says, "the tenants might not be able to pay rents, 
the tax in such cases was to be paid by the landlord or occupier, who, 
where the land was let at its value, was to pay the whole tax (out 
of the rent) ; where the land was let at half its value or less, the 
tenant was to pay a share." Thomas Davis, commenting on this 
Act, asks, "Where, in distracted or quiet times, since, has a Parlia- 
ment of landlords in England or Ireland acted with equal liber- 
ality?" 

^ The crown was made in Ireland. 



440 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

The Tithes which had been borne by the Catholics in the Ascend- 
ancy Parliaments were adjusted fairly; the Protestants were to 
pay tithes to their own church, the CathoHcs to theirs. No Prot- 
estant bishop was to be deprived of stipend or honour. They were 
to hold their incomes; they were to sit in Parliament. The estates, 
plundered by the Cromwellians thirty-six years before, were 
restored to the previous owners, but compensation was to be given to 
all innocent persons. It endeavoured to make a war-navy. It 
passed Acts for the relief and release of "poor distressed prisoners 
for debts"; for the settling of intestate estates; for delays in the 
execution of the laws; the unnecessary arrests of judgments, and the 
prevention of frauds and perjuries. It prohibited the importation of 
English, Welsh and Scotch coal. Large sums of money, it declared, 
were sent out of the kingdom, which hindered the industry of 
labourers in supplying Dublin and other places with fuel, and gave 
opportunity to persons importing coal to raise the prices when 
they pleased. As, however, occasion might arise when it would 
be necessary to import coal the government could issue a license 
for its importation then. The Irish coal pits were to be worked. 
The owners were not to take dishonest advantage of the law to 
raise their prices. 

It further passed an Act for the improvement of shipping and 
trade. It drew attention to the size and safety of Irish harbours. 
"They stand very fit and convenient for trade and commerce with 
most Nations, Kingdoms and Plantations; although this trade 
and commerce had been hindered by laws, statutes and ordinances 
that had prohibited and disabled Irish men from importing or 
exporting direct into or from Ireland, all exports and imports 
having to pass through England; thus cutting Ireland off from 
direct communication with Europe, America, Africa, Plantations 
and Colonies." It provided schools of navigation in Dublin, Bel- 
fast, Limerick, Cork and Galway, where youths were to be 
instructed in Mathematics and Navigation; the instructors to be 
paid out of the public revenue. 

Such was the Patriot Parliament against which its detractors 
hurled the words "bloody" and "rapacious." 

Schomberg, William's Dutch general, arrived in Belfast Lough 
with twenty thousand men. He took Carrickfergus after a week's 
siege; the garrison were allowed to march out with the honours of 
war. Then he formed his camp at Dundalk. It was Ill-omened 
ground. A year before a Mr. Hamilton "a sober rational man" 
riding towards Dundalk one evening saw several little lights in 
the air and two large ones. He heard the most dismal groans 



THE WILLIAMITE WARS 441 

coming from the plain. The sober and rational man was startled, 
as were his companions. 

The camp soon rang to groans and curses. The autumn rains 
fell; the lines were flooded. The plague broke out; six thousand 
men died. The living made ghastly revelry; sang ribald songs, 
sitting on the dead bodies of their comrades, and drank healths to 
the devil. As the patrols came to bury the dead they grumbled 
that their seats should be taken away. 

When Schomberg struck his camp, de Rosen would have 
attacked him. James, again with the army, forbade the attack. 
Then, leaving his soldiers to take care of themselves, he returned 
to Dublin, where he amused himself with "disgraceful amours." 
"There were two frightfully ugly creatures," says the Duchess of 
Orleans, "with whom he was on the most intimate terms." 

He thought little of Sarsfield. "Sarsfield is a brave fellow," 
he said, "but very scantily supplied with brains." Louis's ambas- 
sador, d'Avaux, had another opinion. "Sarsfield has valour," he 
wrote to Louis's minister, Louvois — "but, above all, honour and 
probity which is proof against any assault." He had "all the trouble 
in the world to get him made Brigadier." Tyrconnell had opposed 
the promotion. Sarsfield was a very brave man, Tyrconnell said, 
but he had no head. d'Avaux carried his point, and Tyrconnell 
sent Sarsfield with a handful of men into Connacht. He raised 
two thousand more men there on his own credit, and held Connacht. 
d'Avaux wished to send him to France. "He is a man who will 
always be at the head of his troops," he wrote to the French min- 
ister, "and will take great care of them. First class colonels will 
obey him when they will not obey another." He had asked the 
king for Sarsfield. But the Connacht campaign had changed James's 
opinion. He grew very angry. He walked three times around the 
room; he charged d'Avaux with wishing to take his officers away. 
"I bore it all meekly," said d'Avaux, "having a good notion of 
my own how to get Sarsfield to France." This was to offer him 
the chief command of the Irish troops there. 

But Sarsfield did not go. His work, he knew, was in Ireland. 

Meanwhile, in spite of asthma and a continual cough, William 
prepared for his campaign in Ireland. He sent over seven thousand 
men to the aid of Schomberg. In the same month, March, seven 
thousand French soldiers under the command of the Duke of 
Lauzun landed at Kinsale in exchange for five thousand Irishmen 
that had been sent to France. Lauzun was a mere courtier; a man 
who made a jest at everything. He did not take the Irish campaign 
seriously; nor did many of the French oflicers. 



442 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

But William made no mistake about its importance. He 
brought everything to secure a successful issue. Among his arms 
was the prototype of the machine gun. It had been recently in- 
vented; a wheel-engine that discharged 150 musket barrels at once, 
and on being turned the same number again. The campaign was 
opened by Schomberg in the spring. But not till William landed 
in June was the advance made in force. The prince stopped 
plundering, and hanged the plunderers. He paid for all he took. 
He struck with his own cane a soldier who was robbing a woman, 
and had him afterward hanged. 

James at once abandoned his advanced post in the north. He 
then abandoned every pass. He might have annihilated, certainly 
held back, the enemy at the Pass of Moira. Instead he retreated 
to the Boyne. He had prepared for his flight. Ships, by his order, 
lay ready at Waterford to carry him to France. Reluctantly he 
waited his son-in-law on the bank of the river. 

The battle of the Boyne was fought on Tuesday, July ist, 1690.' 
It was not the cardinal battle of the war. Aughrim was that. 
James had about twenty-six thousand men, many of them raw levies, 
and ill armed. He was also short of guns. William had ten 
thousand more men — a composite army — Danes, English, Dutch 
and French Huguenots, all highly drilled, and well armed. He 
had also a strong artillery. By his order his men wore green sprigs 
in their hats. The Irish, in compliment to the French, wore the 
white cockade. 

James had secured his retreat to Dublin. He commanded 
Sarsfield to hold a body of horse in the rear. Should the day 
go against him, he could gallop back to the city. The command 
kept Sarsfield in enforced inaction during the day. Though warned 
by his Irish officers that the enemy would probably make a flanking 
movement to cross the Boyne at Slane, James heeded not the 
warning. At sunrise Schomberg's men were seen along the height 
making in that direction. James gave a hasty order. His whole 
wing, part of the centre, and his six remaining guns were sent to 
meet the flanking division. It was too late; the enemy had crossed. 
Other fords remained, were hotly contested. It was low water; 
the fords at Oldbridge were attempted by William's men. One 
battalion of infantry held the ford at Oldbridge. "For a half a 
mile the Boyne was filled with thousands of armed men struggling 
to gain the opposite bank." "Schomberg remained opposite to us," 

2 Old Calendar. In the New Calendar, July 12th, of course, became the Boyne 
anniversary day. 



THE WILLIAMITE WARS 443 

says the Duke of Berwick in his Memoirs. "He attacked and took 
Oldbridge in spite of the resistance of the regiment there. Seven 
battalions went down to the help of the infantry. Two battalions 
of Irish Guards scattered them; but their cavalry managed to pass 
at another ford, and proceeded to fall upon our infantry. I 
brought up our cavalry, and thus enabled our battalions to retire." 
Berwick and his Horse had a very unequal combat, as the ground 
was broken and they were outnumbered. "Nevertheless we charged 
again and again ten different times," he says, "and at length the 
enemy, confounded by our boldness, halted, and we reformed before 
them, and marched at a slow pace to rejoin the king." 

The unequal battle raged all day. The miserable James began 
to look toward his body-guard. At five In the evening he left the 
field. By the end of the day the Irish were forced to retire; the 
majority doing so In good order. The battle of the Boyne was 
not a decisive victory for the Prince of Orange; it was in reality 
a drawn battle. 

The king reached Dublin at ten o'clock. He had taken two 
hundred men from the body-guard, and rode helter-skelter to the 
city. Lady Tyrconnell met him at the Castle-gate. Upstairs she 
asked him what he would have for supper. "He then gave her 
an account of what a breakfast he had got, which made him have 
little stomach for his supper." It is said, when he declared that 
the Irish army had run away, she answered, "But your Majesty 
won the race." 

From the aspect of his men, Dublin expected to see but the 
remnant of a broken army pouring into the city. "It was greatly 
surprised," says a Person of Quality, "when, an hour or two after, 
we heard the whole body of the Irish Horse coming In, in very 
good order, with kettle-drums, hautboys, and trumpets; and early 
the next morning the French and a great body of the Irish Foot. 
These being rested a little, marched out again to meet the enemy, 
which was supposed to draw near." 

And while the army went out to meet his foes, James railed 
at It. He summoned the Lord Mayor and Council. "The Irish 
had basely fled the field," he told them; henceforth he determined 
never to lead an Irish army again; "And now he resolved to shift 
for himself, as they themselves must do." He advised them to 
submit to the Prince of Orange. Then he hurried to Waterford, 
took ship to Kinsale, and thence to France. 

The army he had deserted and reviled marched west, discom- 
fited but not subdued. Deeper hopes than the restoration of the 



444 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Stuarts stirred many of the soldiers' hearts. James had gone! 
Let him go ! He was no true king, no leader 1 They would defend 
Limerick, Galway, Athlone, the passes of the Shannon ! 

The generals conferred. James's cause was lost, Lauzun said; 
the French troops must return to France; favourable terms might 
be made with William. Tyrconnell now "grown stout and leth- 
argic" was in agreement with Lauzun. But Sarsfield stood firm; 
all was not lost; the three towns, the Shannon, could and must be 
defended. 

Athlone was held by Colonel Grace. Douglas, William's gen- 
eral, summoned the town to surrender. Grace fired a pistol. 
"These are my terms," he said, "and before I surrender I'll eat 
my boots!" So he held Athlone till Sarsfield relieved it. And 
now, through the three quarters of Ireland an irregular force was 
moving, waging guerilla war. They were undrilled, armed with 
half pikes, sgians, scythes, some muskets. Irish history knows 
them as the Rapparees. One of them, Hogan, scout and hard- 
rider, gallops across a page. 

A council, final in its decision, was held at Limerick. William's 
army was advancing on the city. Make terms with the Prince of 
Orange, Lauzun and Tyrconnell said. And Sarsfield, resolved, 
answered, "No terms!" He was supported by the Irish oflicers. 
Lauzun laughed at them. "Why should the English bring cannon 
against fortifications," he said, "that could be battered down by 
roasted apples!" 

But Sarsfield and his supporters won. An agent was sent 
to France to let both kings know that the Irish meant to defend 
their country. A day or two later, the Irish officers, backed by 
the Irish arm)^ declared that Sarsfield should command in chief 
next to Tyrconnell. Disapproving of the appointment, Tyrconnell 
sent Sarsfield off with a handful of men to watch the enemy. He 
returned on William's approach to find that Tyrconnell and Lauzun 
had been making every effort to persuade the officers to agree to 
a capitulation. Some, who had estates to lose, had been won over. 
But the majority stood by Sarsfield. 

Lauzun withdrew to Galway. He took his French soldiers, 
eight guns, and a quantity of ammunition. 

On the 9th of August, William was close to Limerick. Three 
regiments guarded the fords. Without consulting his generals, 
Tyrconnell drew them off, and taking them with him retired to 
Galway. Boisseleaux was appointed Governor of Limerick. The 
Duke of Berwick, Sarsfield, Dorrington and thre-e Brigadiers had 
command of the army. 



THE WILLIAMITE WARS 445 

There was truth in Lauzun's taunt. Limerick had no fortifi- 
cations worth regarding. There was a wall without ramparts, and 
"some miserable little towers" without ditches. A covered way 
was built before the great gate, horn shaped, and palisaded. Time 
was required to strengthen the defences. William was within a 
few miles of the city. If he brought up his great guns before this 
was done, men might die, but Limerick must fall. 

The prince expected little resistance. He looked for an early 
capitulation. He knew Tyrconnell's vacillating mind and that 
I^auzun was anxious to get back to France. There was Sarsfield, 
unbuyable; but a man of sense would not defend a lost cause. 
He would offer fair terms; the Irish might practise their religion; 
to those who joined him he would give rewards. 

So, confident, he drew near. He had left his heavy battering 
train at Cashel. Within two miles of Limerick he was attacked 
by Irish skirmishers. Retreating from one strong position to 
another, they drew his men close to the city walls. Then the Irish 
guns opened fire, and the skirmishers re-entered Limerick. 

A trumpeter rode forward. He summoned the town. "Open 
your gates ! Let the King of England in !" "Limerick will not open 
her gates; will not surrender I" Boisseleaux answered. William 
had laid out his camp. The city guns were trained upon it and 
so well served that he had to withdraw both his camp and his light 
artillery. 

Messengers rode to Cashel: send up the battering train! A 
Captain Pulteny commanded it; heavy guns, mortars;. 150 waggons 
of ammunition for the artillery; tin boats to cross the Shannon; 
provisions; 500 draught horses. A deserter from the camp stole 
into Limerick. He brought word of its approach. Sarsfield acted 
at once. He rode out of Limerick and galloped to the cavalry 
camp on the Clare side. A swift order; and six hundred men 
stood to their horses. A guide was found; Galloping Hogan, 
Rapparee, famous rider and scout, who knew every track and 
pass. 

They rode inland; then wheeled and kept in line with the river. 
A Williamite force held Killaloe bridge. A ford, unknown to the 
English, lay below Lough Derg. It was a bright night with a 
harvest moon. They passed behind the town of Killaloe and the 
column crossed the river. Then it headed for the Keeper moun- 
tain, and lay that night in a fold of its shoulder. The day came. 
The convoy trailed out from the southern mountains and along 
the plain. Its guard marched at ease. That night it encamped at 
Ballyneety. Down from the Keeper rode Sarsfield and his troop- 



446 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

ers: scouts had brought them the convoy's watchword — "Sars- 
field!" — good omen! Moonlight and clouds whitened and dark- 
ened the plain In turn. Under the cloak of the clouds the Irish 
advanced. A sentry challenged. "Advance and give the word!" 
"Sarsfield! — Sarsfield Is the word and Sarsfield is the man!" and 
the Irish Horse dashed on the convoy. The startled guards 
ran to their picketted horses; were caught In their flight and cut 
down; the camp was captured. Each gun was loaded to the muzzle, 
its head sunk in the ground; the tin boats were smashed; stores, 
ammunition were heaped together, powder placed round, and a 
train laid. Then the Irish galloped away; and the roar of the 
explosion echoed across the Golden Valley to Limerick city and 
William's camp. 

They were met at Banagher Bridge by some Wllliamite Horse 
sent to intercept them. An Irish Protestant, "a substantial country 
gentleman," who had seen the Irish cross at Lough Derg, had gone 
to the English camp and told what he had seen. But Sarsfield got 
back to Limerick with scarcely any loss. The capture of the guns 
had been of the first importance. William's siege operation had 
to be delayed till a new battering train arrived. This gave Limerick 
a week in which to strengthen herself. 

They made the best of the time. When William's heavy guns 
were trained on the city and his trenches advanced. Limerick met 
and bore the shock. Counter mines were laid; her guns answered. 
By the second week, however, her wharfs were on fire, many 
houses burnt, parts of her walls levelled. On Tuesday, August 
26th, his trenches were within four yards of her counterscarp, and 
her palisades had been beaten down. All through the night the 
enemy poured In a discharge of shells and red hot balls, and the 
breach lay thirty feet wide. But behind that breach a retirade 
had been made and a battery of guns planted, while others were 
so placed as to take the stormers on both flanks. The bugles rang 
at daybreak; drums beat. Men left their trenches as the soldiers 
fell in; the butchers armed themselves with their cleavers; the 
blacksmiths with their hammers. Women seized bottle and stones, 
and followed the men. Limerick was prepared to die rather than 
yield. 

The morning began dull and cloudy; a thick mist lay on the 
Keeper mountain. As the day advanced the sun broke through 
the clouds, and the heat became Intense. At two o'clock the guns 
ceased, and the city was again summoned. For an hour there was 
a pause after the confident demand and the resolute answer. Then 
three guns were fired from the enemy's camp — a signal! Imme- 



THE WILLIAMITE WARS 447 

diately the attacking column, ten thousand strong, moved forward 
to the assault. The EngHsh grenadiers, in their piebald uniform 
of red and yellow, leapt out of their trenches, sprang upon the 
counterscarp, firing and throwing their grenades. Driving the 
defenders before them, they pressed on, reached the breach, and 
poured into the city. The masked battery opened upon them, 
mowed a wide path through their lines; and, cut oft from their 
supports, they were overpowered, few escaping back to their 
trenches. 

The fury of the fight raged at the breach. For three hours 
the Irish infantry stood there, filling up again and again their 
bloody gaps as regiment after regiment of the foe was brought 
up and hurled against them. Slowly, at last, the line was pushed 
back, and the stormers once more entered the city. A fierce hand 
to hand fight ensued in the streets. Boisseleaux ordered up the 
reserves; those who had been driven from the breach rallied. The 
citizens, women as well as men, rushed again to the attack. The 
enemy was dislodged and forced back on the gap. 

There a deadly struggle followed. William sent forward his 
reserves. The Irish met and held them in check; an order was 
sent to the Irish Horse to take the foe in the rear. It had been 
inactive till then. Now its turn was come. 

Galloping across Ball's Bridge, it swept through the streets, 
and passed out by the sally port at St. John's Gate into the covered 
way which led to the breach. Two regiments of Danish Horse 
stood in their path as they emerged. The Irish charged; rode 
through them; cut them down; swept on. Galloping up to the 
breach, they took the stormers in the rear, made a path through 
theif ranks, and rode across with crimson sabres and exultant 
cheers. 

As their suddenness and dash staggered the foe, the mine laid 
by the defenders in the Black Battery, blew up, and a number of 
men of William's Brandenberg regiment were killed. The Irish 
infantry rushed upon his reserves, forced them from the breach, 
drove them across the counterscarp, back to the trenches, and fol- 
lowed them to their camp. The Horse charged the flying foe; 
sabring their disordered ranks. 

The assault had failed; Limerick was saved! 

William drew off his army, and returned to England. A French 
fleet carried Lauzun and his troops back to France. Tyrconnell 
followed him there. Lauzun reported the king's cause lost. Tyr- 
connell, encouraged by the defence of Limerick, said that there 
was a chance of success and asked for money and men. In January 



448 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

of the following year he returned with money but no men. The 
Irish camp was divided into two parties; those who wished to carry 
on the war; and those, men with estates, who wished to make peace. 
Tyrconnell fostered this party. The campaign of 1690 ended with 
the taking of Cork and Kinsale by an EngHsh fleet under the com- 
mand of Churchill. The Irish army was shut up in Connacht. 
Sarsfield, resisting the policy of despair, kept the passes of the 
Shannon. Little was done from the closing of the campaign till 
the opening of the next one with the arrival of the French general, 
St. Ruth, in the following year. Only the indomitable Rapparees 
kept up an unceasing guerilla warfare. They harassed the Dutch 
general, Ginckel, destroyed his forage, watched for his patrols, 
captured numbers of horses. 

In May, the French general, St. Ruth, landed in Ireland. He 
brought arms, ammunition, clothing and provisions, but no troops. 
The man was a real soldier; no jester like Lauzun, but of a haughty 
and jealous nature. He knew what Irish troops could do. In the 
Piedmont campaign he had seen enough of Irish valour to know 
that Irish soldiers were the best missile force in the world. He 
let Tyrconnell see. Viceroy as he was, that he, St. Ruth, alone was 
to command the army. 

The Irish held Athlone. William's generals, Ginckel and 
Mackay, with a large and well armed army, marched upon it. St. 
Ruth encamped within two miles of the town on the Connacht side; 
occupied the high ground commanding the river, and strengthened 
the entrenchments along its bank. Mackay, attempting to cross 
at a place further down the river, was driven back. He then 
determined to pass by the bridge. The Irish broke the arches. 
He spanned them with beams. Every bit of his work was hotly 
contested. The siege was nine days old when the bridge was nearly 
ready. One link remained for completion. Beams already rested 
on the broken arch; planks were being laid across; the Irish, driven 
from their last shelter in the trenches, had little power to prevent it. 

But one brave man dared to save the town. His name was 
Custume, a sergeant of dragoons. He boldly called for ten volun- 
teers, with him to break the bridge. He could have had that 
number a hundred fold. With breast and back pieces on, the 
eleven bold ones, rushed upon the bridge, drove back the carpenters, 
began pulling up the planks, breaking down the beams, flinging 
them in the river. A tremendous fire from the English wiped out 
eleven heroes with the job only half done. Another eleven noble 
ones sprang out upon the bridge. Hatchet and axe were plied like 



THE WILLIAMITE WARS 449 

fury. The last beam floated down the Shannon ; two men returned 
alive; twenty wore the martyr's crown. 

Ginckel made a covered way to repair the bridge. Three Danes 
under the sentence of death were offered their lives if they would 
find a ford. They entered the river at three places and were 
fired at as if they were deserters. The water was low; they got 
across easily. An attempt to storm the town was ordered for the 
next morning. Ginckel's men were to cross at three points, the 
bridge, the ford, and by a pontoon of boats. St. Ruth heard of 
the intended assault. He threw reinforcements into the town; 
brought his army from the camp, and awaited the attack by the 
river. No attack was made. The Irish burnt the covered way. 
Ginckel, held back so long, was discouraged. He called a Council 
of war. He wished to retire. His generals advised him to remain. 
In the midst of the debate two deserters were brought in. They 
had important news. St. Ruth, confident that the siege was raised, 
had marched back to camp, and had left the defence of the town to 
his rawest levies. This report decided Ginckel; he ordered a fresh 
attack for six that evening. 

Two of the newly enlisted regiments left to defend the town 
had no bayonets and but a round or two of ammunition. When 
the attack commenced an urgent message was sent to St. Ruth, 
who was about to go out shooting, and who made light of it. 
*'It was impossible," he said. Thus, in half an hour Athlone was 
captured after a stout defence of ten days. 

The cardinal battle of the war was now to be fought. That 
battle decided Ireland's fate. St. Ruth withdrew his army and 
encamped on the Galway side of the River Suck. The position was 
admirably chosen. It lay on the side of Kilcommodan Hill, extend- 
ing for nearly two miles. At the base of the hill, to the east, a 
small stream flowed through boggy ground. His right wing, spread 
beyond the hill, rested on firm soil, and faced the river. His left 
lay near a half ruined castle protected in front by a bog. The 
centre, formed in two lines, was ranked behind breastworks border- 
ing the boggy land. The camp was entrenched; two raths on the 
hillside were held. The slope of the hill, lined with hedges and 
ditches, had openings cut through them for the passage of the 
cavalry and foot. The reserve, under Sarsfield, who had received 
strict orders not to move, was stationed on the other side of the 
hill at a considerable distance from the main body of the army. 
There were but two points near the bog by which Ginckel could 
advance — the Pass of Aughrim and that of Urrachee. The latter 



450 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

ran to the right of the Irish camp; the former from Aughrim 
Castle to a piece of firm ground bordered by two bogs, and joined 
by a narrow strip of land to the firm ground opposite. 

On the nth day of July Ginckel reached the hills opposite Kil- 
commodan. Seeing the strength of St. Ruth's position, he hesitated 
to give battle. He began a cautious advance on the morning of the 
1 2th. In the Irish camp at the same time, Mass v/as celebrated. 
A dense fog hung between the two forces. By noon it lifted, and 
Ginckel saw the Irish massed in strong positions awaiting his ad- 
vance. The Pass of Urrachee was the weakest point in their 
front. Yet, there, some guns had been placed. Two outposts had 
been stationed on Ginckel's side of the river. He sent a small force 
to drive them in. An hour's fighting followed. The Irish posts 
were driven back; they recovered their posts. This was but an 
affair of the advanced guard. At two o'clock Ginckel's army fell 
into position. At three he held a council of war. Should he attack 
or not? he asked. For himself, he hesitated. Mackay urged him 
to accept battle; propounded a plan. This was to advance on St. 
Ruth's left, assault the castle of Aughrim, cross the bog, and attack 
the Irish centre. His advice prevailed. 

It was near five o'clock. Mackay took command of the divi- 
sion that was to force the Pass of Aughrim. Ginckel was to direct 
the movement on the Pass of Urrachee; the Duke of Wurtemberg 
the centre. Ginckel made a feint attack on St. Ruth's right. He 
hoped he would draw off some regiments from his left to support 
the threatened wing. The battle commenced with this advance. A 
Danish regiment spread out as if to out-flank the Irish right. A 
body of Huguenots advanced on the troops beyond the Pass, attack- 
ing the Irish through the hedges. The Irish Horse charged them. 
After a fierce fight the foe was driven back to the bog. The 
attack on this point was renewed again. Mackay hoped that St. 
Ruth would draw off troops from his right wing to support his 
left. Then the real attack would be made on Aughrim. St. Ruth 
did as he wished. The officer to whom he gave the order took 
the first line as well. At once Mackay sent cavalry to force the 
Pass, while he with the main body commenced the passage of the 
bog, supported by two batteries of field pieces. The ground had 
been sounded; found possible for foot. Opposite the Irish centre 
the ground narrowed, widening out by Aughrim. His troops were 
in two divisions; one was to cross the bog and attack the Irish 
centre, seize the first hedge row, and halt till Mackay and his 
cavalry came to their support. 

Protected by the batteries the men reached the base of the hill. 



THE WILLIAMITE WARS 451 

When within a few yards of the hedge, the Irish opened fire. Their 
orders were to draw the enemy up the hill. This they did, then 
stood their ground, and the Irish cavalry swept down upon both 
flanks of the enemy and threw them into disorder. 

While this was happening Mackay's second division was get- 
ting through the bog. At the first ditch the Irish met them, and 
Mackay's van was broken. His other regiments were hurried up, 
but the Irish held their ground. Mackay sent to the oflficer who 
was to force the Pass of Aughrim, ordering him to come to his 
help and not attack the castle. But before the order could be 
obeyed Mackay's men were forced back to the bog. This was 
the second repulse of the enemy at Aughrim. 

Seeing that Mackay could not break his centre, St. Ruth was 
now certain of victory. "I shall beat them back to the gates of 
Dubhnl" he cried. It was no boast. His troops had successfully 
resisted every attack. At all points, save one, Ginckel's army 
had been repulsed. 

That point was the Pass of Aughrim. The Pass was an old 
broken road, narrow, boggy, sixty yards in length. Not more than 
two horsemen could ride on it abreast. It was commanded by the 
castle, a crumbling building. Two regiments of Foot, under 
Colonel Burke, were stationed there. Two guns commanded the 
way. The men were armed with French fire-locks. There were 
four barrels of gunpowder and ammunition chests in the castle. 
When the chests were opened it was found that the bullets were 
cast for English muskets and that the cannon balls were two big 
for the guns. The soldiers tore the buttons from their coats and 
chopped their ramrods into bullets. The enemy came up the Pass 
protected by their own guns. The Irish fired their pellets with 
little effect. Their guns had no bayonets. The Irish Horse, posted 
on the other side of the castle, rode round to the left to check the 
advance. They found this way blocked, though St. Ruth had or- 
dered it to be kept open. They had to swing round and make a 
detour before they could charge. A sharp fight followed; the 
enemy's regiment were driven back to the bog. 

St. Ruth had watched the attack on the Pass. Not knowing 
that Burke's men had no ammunition, he had been astonished that 
the enemy had got up the way. He sent an aide-camp to the cavalry 
reserve under Sarsfield. This reserve was stationed on the other 
side of the hill, out of sight of the battle. He ordered that half 
of the men were to advance. Sarsfield was not to command it. He 
was to remain with the other half. By this act Aughrim was lost. 

The detachment came up, reformed before St, Ruth, and he 



452 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

placed himself at its head. He rode slowly down the hill. His 
brilliant uniform glittered in the evening light. "The day is ours, 
boys!" he cried. "They are broken! Let us beat them to some 
purpose!" 

Then something sped through the air from the enemy's right; 
struck him and carried his head away. The dead man's horse 
swung round, the body upright in the saddle for a pace or two 
before it fell to the ground. A paralysis seized his officers. The 
battle was all but won; this charge would have completed the 
victory, yet his second in command, de Tesse, a Frenchman, did 
not advance. Instead of making that charge for victory, he began 
to retire. Ginckel's almost beaten army saw the movement, pressed 
forward. Mackay's Horse turned the left flank of the Irish. In 
the centre the Irish held the ground till they were caught between 
Ginckel's and Mackay's men. Then the rout commenced. 

And Sarsfield, waiting for orders on the other side of the 
hill, only knew the day was lost as the Irish regiments broke over 
the crest. To keep back the foe was now impossible. But cool, 
great, he kept his head, and organised the retreat in so masterly a 
way that a document in the French annals says — "He performed 
miracles, and if he was not killed or taken it was not from any 
fault of his own." He led his soldiers in order to Limerick. 

The Irish army gathered there. On the 25th of August, 
Ginckel invested the city on three sides. William wanted the war 
ended; Ginckel was empowered to give favourable terms. A free 
pardon was offered to all; the Catholic gentry would be restored 
to their estates. The offer created at once a peace party within 
the city. It was opposed by Sarsfield. French aid might come; 
the army could defend Limerick again. He won, and Ginckel's 
summons was refused. Sixty guns then opened upon the city; an 
English fleet bombarded it from the river. But Limerick remained 
untaken. Once more she showed the soul of her army and her 
citizens. Unable to carry the town by assault, Ginckel turned the 
siege into a blockade. Then Luttrel, an Anglo-Irish officer, long 
suspected, showed him a pass over the Shannon. One morning 
the Irish beheld the foe on the Clare side of the river. Again 
Ginckel offered favourable terms. 

The peace party said it was folly to refuse. This party, re- 
sisted, Sarsfield saw, would attempt to hand over the city to Ginckel. 

Yet Limerick made one more fight. It was September 23rd. 
From dawn the bloody struggle lasted. Then a parley was held; 
firing ceased. For the third time Ginckel offered his terms. At 
last, Sarsfield accepted them. When the soldiers and citizens heard 



THE WILLIAMITE WARS 453 

that the defence had ended, they uttered loud cries of anger and 
grief, many ran to the ramparts and broke their weapons there. 
Limerick had capitulated I 

The terms were to be signed in the presence of the Lord 
Justices. Sarsfield demanded that. They came posting down from 
Dublin; they put their signatures to the treaty. Irish Catholics were 
to have the right to exercise their religion; to have the rights of 
citizens; to be preserved from all disturbances. By the military 
articles, the garrison was to march out with arms and guns, bag- 
gage, colours flying, drums beating. Officers and men, Rapparees 
and volunteers, who wished to expatriate themselves, were free 
to do so, and might depart in companies or parties. If plundered 
on the way, William's government was to make good their loss. 
Fifty ships were to be provided for their transportation; two men- 
of-war for the officers. 

Ginckel did not want that fine war material to escape. Would 
the Irish regiments join France or William? On the 5th of October 
they were to march out of Limerick. That day they were to make 
their choice. The royal standards of England and France were 
set up in a field. To one standard or the other each regiment was 
to turn. Sarsfield, Ginckel and their staffs watched the scene. The 
Irish Foot Guards came first, the finest of the regiment, fourteen 
hundred strong. They marched to the Standards. Then, without 
a pause, the splendid column wheeled to the side of France. That 
day of the fourteen thousand men of the Irish army, only one 
thousand and forty-six men turned to William's standard. 

A few days later a French fleet came up the Shannon. It 
brought men, money, arms, ammunition, stores and clothing. The 
news reached Sarsfield. Stunned, he remained silent for a few 
moments. Then : — "Too late," he said, "the Treaty is signed. Ire- 
land's and our honour is pledged. Though one hundred thousand 
Frenchmen offered to aid us now, we must keep our word!" 

In his quarters Ginckel heard that the fleet had come. He was 
alarmed. Would Sarsfield tear up the Treaty? Would the French 
soldiers land? Would the Irish regiments listed for France, men 
with their arms, renew the fight? The cautious Dutchman, an 
honest brave man, himself, feared. 

But his anxiety was soon ended. Sarsfield, the unbuyable — 
Sarsfield, the man of honour — had forbidden the French to land. 
Instead, their ships were to transport the Irish regiments to 
France. 

Not a man of these saw Ireland aorain. 



CHAPTER LI II 

THE LATER PENAL LAWS 

When fire and sword had signally failed to suppress the Irish race, 
new means to that end must be found. So the fertile mind of the 
conqueror invented the Penal Laws. 

Professor Lecky, a Protestant of British blood and ardent Brit- 
ish sympathy, says (in his History of Ireland in the 1 8th Century) 
that the object of the Penal Laws was threefold: 

( 1 ) To deprive the Catholics of all civil life 

(2) To reduce them to a condition of most extreme and brutal 

ignorance 

(3) To dissociate them from the soil. 

He might, with absolute justice, have substituted Irish for 
Catholics — and added, (4) To extirpate the Race. 

"There Is no instance," says Dr. Samuel Johnson, "even in the 
Ten Persecutions, of such severity as that which the Protestants of 
Ireland exercised against the Catholics." ^ 

Like good wine the Penal code improved with age. It was 
only in the i8th century that it attained the marvellous perfection 
which caused Edmund Burke to describe it as "a machine of wise 
and elaborate contrivance, as well fitted for the oppression, im- 

^ Dr. Johnson evidently laboured under delusion that these dreadful persecu- 
tions were entirely the fault of the Protestants of Ireland, not of the Government 
of England. Lecky, however, knew Irish history; and this is what he has to say 
of the Penal Code (in his "History of Ireland in the 18th Century") : "It was not 
the persecution of a sect, but the degradation of a nation. It was the instrument 
employed by a conquering race (the Anglo-Irish) supported by a neighbouring 
Power, to crush to the dust the people among whom they were planted. And, in- 
deed, when we remember that the greater part of it was in force for nearly a cen- 
tury, that its victims formed at least three-fourths of the nation, that its degrading 
and dividing influence extended to every field of social, political, professional, in- 
tellectual, and even domestic life, and that it was enacted without the provocation 
of any rebellion, in defiance of a treaty which distinctly guaranteed the Irish 
Catholics from any further oppression on account of their religion, it may be 
justly regarded as one of the blackest pages in the history of persecution." 

So it is not to be wondered at that in the early part of the 18th century a 
foreign observer in Ireland noted that a Catholic could easily be told by his stooped 
carriage and subdued manner. Even when Thackeraj' visited Ireland the Catholic 
priests, he noted, had an abashed look. The innocent man wondered why that 
was so ! 

454 



THE LATER PENAL LAWS 455 

poverishment, and degradation of a people, and the debasement in 
them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted 
ingenuity of man" — and the French jurist Montesquieu to say of 
it that it was "conceived by demons, written in blood, and registered 
in Hell." 

In the treaty of Limerick the faith and honour of the Crown 
were pledged not only that the Irish in Ireland should, in their lives, 
liberties and property be equally protected with the British usurpers 
in Ireland — but it was especially pledged that they should be "pro- 
tected in the free and unfettered exercise of their religion." And 
this solemn pledge of the British crown by which the Irish were in- 
duced to lay down their arms marked the beginning of a national 
robbery and national persecution which for cold-blooded systemisa- 
tion was hitherto unapproached in the history of Irish persecutions. 
Just as the flagrant breaking of the solemn Treaty of Limerick is 
hardly paralleled in history. 

When the Lords Justice returned to Dublin after signing the 
treaty, Dr. Dopping, Protestant Lord Bishop of Meath, preached 
before them in Christ Church Cathedral upon the sin of keeping 
faith with Papists. All over the country the persecution and plun- 
dering of the papist began again, and was soon in full swing. A 
million acres of papists' lands were confiscated, and their owners 
reduced to beggary.- The British settlers in Ireland began bom- 
barding Parliament with petitions against the Irish papists. If 
these people got their liberties it was shown that Ireland would be 
no place for decent British people.^ 

And, just three years after the faith and honour of the British 
crown had been pledged for the protection of the papists, the Par- 
liament passed its "Act for the Better Securing of the Government 
against Papists." Under this Act, no Catholic could henceforth 
have "gun, pistol or sword, or any other weapon of offence or de- 

2 An English gentleman who received the estate in Cork robbed from the 
McCarthy, was in the twilight of a summer day walking in his easily acquired 
demesne, when he came on an old man seated under a tree, sobbing heart break- 
ingly. He approached the grieved one, and asked the cause of his grief. "These 
lands," said the broken old man, "and that castle were mine. This tree under 
which I sit was planted by my hand. I came here to water it with my tears, be- 
fore sailing to-night for Spain." 

3 Exempli gratia — 

"A petition of one Edward Spragg and others in behalf of themselves and 
other Protestant porters in and about the city of Dublin, complains that one Darby 
Ryan, a captain under the late King James, and a Papist, buys up whole cargoes 
of coals and employs porters of his own persuasion to carry the same to customers, 
by which the petitioners are hindered from their small trade and gains. The peti- 
tion was referred to the Committee of Grievances to report upon it to the House." 
— {Commons Journals, ii, 699). The impudent villainy of the papist Darby! 



456 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

fence, under penalty of fine, imprisonment, pillory, or public whip- 
ping." It was provided that any magistrate could visit the house 
of any of the Irish, at any hour of the night or day, and ransack 
it for concealed weapons. Says John Mitchel of this clause, "It 
fared ill with any Catholic who fell under the displeasure of his 
formidable neighbours. No papist was safe from suspicion who 
had money to pay fines — but woe to the papist who had a hand- 
some daughter 1" 

Under the pledged faith and honour of the British crown, which 
promised to secure the Irish from any disturbance on account of 
their religion, there was passed, next (in the ninth year of Wil- 
liam's reign), "An Act for banishing all Papists exercising any 
ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and regulars of the Popish clergy, out 
of this kingdom." This Act provided that "All Popish Arch- 
bishops, Bishops, Vicars-General, Deans, Jesuits, Monks, Friars, 
and all other regular Popish clergy shall depart out of this king- 
dom before the first day of May, 1698" — under penalty of trans- 
portation for life if they failed to comply — and under penalty to 
those who should dare to return, of being hanged, drawn, and 
quartered.* 

And by such liberality of the British was the Irish nation 
repaid for the generosity it had shown them in its short hour of 
triumph. And the new and improved era of persecution which 
began under William — whose faith and honour were pledged that 
the Irish Catholics should be "protected in the free and unfettered 
exercise of their religion" — marched onward henceforth with mar- 
vellous stride. 

Before going on to enumerate the new Penal Laws that were 
enacted, and the old that were confirmed, it is worth while to glance 
back a couple of years, and note how Irish Catholics, when the rule 
of their own country came into their hands, treated their long-time 

* Lecky: "In Ireland all Catholic archbishops, bishops, deacons and vica/s- 
general were ordered by a certain day to leave the country. If after that date 
they were found in it, they were to be first imprisoned and then banished, and if 
they returned they were pronounced guilty of high treason and were liable to be 
hanged, disembowelled, and quartered. Nor were these idle words. The law of 
1709 offered a reward of fifty pounds to any one who secured the conviction of 
any Catholic archbishop, bishop, deacon vicar-general." 

Every Irish Catholic could be compelled at any time of the day or night to go 
before two Justices of the Peace and swear where he heard Mass, who officiated, 
and who was present. He was forbidden to harbour a schoolmaster or a priest 
under pain of having all his goods confiscated. 

The Anglo-Irish House of Commons of 1719 carried a Bill against Papists in 
which it was provided that a captured priest who had been officiating in secret, 
should be branded with a red hot iron upon the cheek. The bill was vetoed in 
England. 



THE LATER PENAL LAWS 457 

persecutors. We have seen, in a previous chapter, the toleration 
shown by the Irish Catholics to their late persecutors, when Mary 
of England re-established the Catholic church and Catholic power. 
When the poor creature, James the Second, came to Ireland in 
1689, and that the Irish got complete control of their own coun- 
try, an Irish Parliament met in Dublin on May 7th of that year. 
This was a Catholic Irish Parliament, representing a Catholic Irish 
country. The members of it were men summoned together in the 
fury of Civil War — men, too, every one of whom was smarting 
from memory of the vilest wrongs ever wrought by conqueror on 
conquered. "They were almost all new men animated by resent- 
ment of bitterest wrongs," says Lecky — "men most of whom or 
of whose fathers had been robbed of their estates." Yet though 
they burned with holy indignation for the persecutions that they 
and their people and their land had suffered at the hands of the 
plunderer and murderer — and though in this their hour of triumph 
they held the power of life and death over their wrongers, Lecky 
confesses, with evident astonishment, "They established freedom 
of religion in a moment of excitement and passion." By this Par- 
liament of cruelly wronged and persecuted papists was enacted the 
golden statute — "We hereby declare that it is the law of this land 
that not now, or ever again, shall any man be persecuted for his 
religion." 

Four Protestant bishops sat in the Upper House. No Catholic 
bishop was called to sit there. While fifteen outlawed Catholic 
peers were recalled, only five new ones were made. Six Protestant 
members sat in the Lower House — almost all the rest of the Prot- 
estant members having espoused the cause of William, or fled to 
England. 

This Parliament established freedom of religion. Says Lecky, 
"The Protestant clergy were guaranteed full liberty of professing, 
preaching, and teaching their religion." 

It established free schools. 

Where Catholic Ireland had before been compelled to support 
the Protestant Church, this Parliament enacted that Catholics 
should pay dues to Catholic pastors, and Protestants should pay 
dues to Protestant pastors.^ 

2 The Catholic Bishop Moloney, in writing to the Parliament, went so far as 
to recommend that compensation should be provided for all Protestant church 
beneficiaries who would now lose the state payments that they had been receiving. 

The Protestant William Parnell, member of the Anglo-Irish Parliament at 
the end of the eighteenth century, says (and shows) in his historical treatise upon 
Ireland: "The Irish Roman Catholics are the only sect that ever resumed power 
without exercising vengeance." 



458 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

And thus did these Irish Catholics, in their brief moment of 
triumph, to the usurpers who had persecuted and plundered them 
till, as one Protestant historian admits "Protestantism came to be 
associated in the native mind with spoliation, confiscation, and 
massacre." 

The Penal Laws enacted or re-enacted in the new era succeed- 
ing the siege of Limerick, when under the pledged faith and honour 
of the English crown, the Irish Catholics were to be "protected in 
the free and unfettered exercise of their religion," provided amongst 
other things that: 

The Irish Catholic was forbidden the exercise of his religion. 

He was forbidden to receive education. 

He was forbidden to enter a profession. 

He was forbidden to hold public office. 

He was forbidden to engage in trade or commerce." 

He was forbidden to live in a corporate town or within five 
miles thereof. 

He was forbidden to own a horse of greater value than five 
pounds.' 

He was forbidden to purchase land. 

He was forbidden to lease land.'' 

He was forbidden to accept a mortgage on land in security 
for a loan.^ 

He was forbidden to vote. 

" "They are not only excluded from all offices in clnirch and state, but are 
interdicted from the army and the law, in all its branches. . . . Every barrister, 
clerk, attorney, or solicitor is obliged to take a solemn oath not to employ persons 
of that persuasion ; no, not as hackney clerks, at the miserable salary of seven 
shillings a week. No tradesman of that persuasion is capable of exercising his 
trade freely in any town coriX)rate : so that they trade and work in their own 
native towns as aliens, paying, as such, quarterage, and other charges and im- 
positions. . . ." — Edmund Burke (Laws Against Popery in Ireland). 

"Every franchise, every honour, every trust, every place down to the very low- 
est (besides whole professions) is reserved for the master caste." (Burke's letter 
to Langrishe.) 

^ Standish O'Grady tells the story of a Catliolic gentleman of the County 
Meath who having driven four blood-horses into the assize town was there held 
up by a Protestant and tendered twenty pounds for his four valuable horses — 
whereupon he drew out a pistol, and shot the animals dead. Ever after, he drove 
into town behind six oxen — his mute protest against "law." "Incidents like this," 
says O'Grady, "aroused and fed the indignation which eventually compelled the 
annulment of the law." 

8 So, a man dead and buried is said, in Ireland, to have "a Protestant lease 
of the soil." 

^ "All persons of that persuasion are disabled from taking or purchasing di- 
rectly, or by trust, any lease, any mortgage upon land, any rents or profits from 
land, any lease, interest, or permit of any land ; any annuity for life or lives, or 
years ; or any estate whatsoever, chargeable upon, or w^hich may in any manner 
affect any lease." — Edmund Burke (Laws Against Popery in Ireland). 



THE LATER PENAL LAWS 459 

He was forbidden to keep any arms for his protection. 

He was forbidden to hold a hfe annuity. 

He was forbidden to buy land from a Protestant. 

He was forbidden to receive a gift of land from a Protestant, 

He was forbidden to inherit land from a Protestant. 

He was forbidden to inherit anything from a Protestant. 

He was forbidden to rent any land that was worth more 
than thirty shillings a year. 

He was forbidden to reap from his land any profit exceed- 
ing a third of the rent.^" 

He could not be guardian to a child. 

He could not, when dying, leave his infant children under 
Catholic guardianship." 

He could not attend Catholic worship. 

He was compelled by the law to attend Protestant worship. 

He could not himself educate his child. 

He could not send his child to a Catholic teacher. 

He could not employ a Catholic teacher to come to his child. 

He could not send his child abroad to receive education.^" 

The priest was banned and hunted with bloodhounds. The 
school master was banned and hunted with bloodhounds. 

If he had an unfaithful wife, she, by going through the form 
of adopting the Protestant religion compelled from a papist the 
heaviest annuity that might be squeezed out of him — and would 

1^ Lecky says : "If a Catholic leaseholder, by his skill or industry so increased 
his profits that they exceeded this proportion, and did not immediately make a 
corresponding increase in his rent, his farm passed to the first Protestant who 
made the discovery. If a Catholic secretly purchased either his own forfeited 
estate, or any other land in the possession of a Protestant, the first Protestant who 
informed against him became the proprietor." 

To encourage among the Anglo-Irish ardour on behalf of the law, the Anglo- 
Irish Parliament in 1705 passed a resolution "that the persecuting of and inform- 
ing against a Papist is an honourable service." 

11 Lecky says: "The influence of the code appeared, indeed, omnipresent. 1t 
blasted the prospects of the Catholic in all struggles of active life. It cast its 
shadows over the inmost recesses of his home. It darkened the very last hour of 
his existence. No Catholic, as I have said, could be guardian to a child ; so the 
dying person knew that his children must pass under the tutelage of Protestants." 

12 "Popish schoolmasters of every species are proscribed by those acts, and 
it is made felony to teach even in a private family. Being sent for education to 
any popish school or college abroad, upon conviction, incurs (if the party sent has 
any estate or inheritance) a kind of unalterable and perpetual outlawry. He is 
disabled to sue in law or equity; to be guardian, executor, or administrator; he 
is rendered incapable of any legacy or deed or gift; he forfeits all his goods and 
chattels forever; and he forfeits for life all his lands, hereditaments, offices, and 
estate of freehold, and all trusts, powers, or interests therein. All persons con- 
cerned in sending them or maintaining them abroad, by the least assistance of 
money or otherwise, are involved in the same disabilities, and subjected to the 
same penalties." — Edmund Burke (Laws Against Popery in Ireland). 



46o THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

inherit all the property at his death. If he had an unnatural child, 
that child by conforming to the Established religion, could compel 
from him the highest possible annuity, and inherit all his property 
at his death — to the total exclusion of all the children who had re- 
mained faithful to their father, and their religion." 

If he was discovered in the act of having his son educated at 
home, a ruinous fine and a dungeon awaited him. If he sent his 
son to be educated abroad, all his property was confiscated — and 
the child so educated was thereby debarred from all rights and 
properties in the country, and debarred from inheriting anything. 

He was compelled to pay double for the support of the militia. 
And he was compelled to make good all damages done to the state 
by the privateers of any Catholic power in which the state was at 
war. 

"After Limerick," says Edmund Burke in his "Tracts" — that 
is, after the Irish had, by the faith and honour of the British Crown, 
been pledged protection in their lives, liberties, and property, "there 
was not a single right of nature or benefit of society which had not 
been either totally taken away, or considerably impaired." 

The law soon came to recognise an Irishman in Ireland only 
for the purpose of repressing him. Till in the reign of George I, 
Lord Chancellor Bowes and also Chief Justice Robinson, in their 
official capacity, pronounced: "The law does not suppose any 
such person to exist as an Irish Roman Catholic." 

Lecky says that it was more through rapacity than fanaticism 
that the English and Anglo-Irish so ferociously oppressed, re- 
pressed, and robbed of both their moral and material rights, the 
Irish Catholics." 

13 Lecky says: "The undutiful wife, the rebellious and unnatural son, had 
only to add to their other crimes the guilt of a sacrilegiously vain conversion, in 
order to secure both impunity and reward, and to deprive those whom they had 
injured of the management and disposal of their property." 

1* One historian says that they were really more anxious to have the soil of 
Ireland turn Protestant, than the people. 

The insignificant number of Irish who embraced the new religion did so in 
practically every case for purpose of holding their property. There was in Ros- 
common a celebrated character named Myers who craved for salvation through 
the Protestant religion when he found that a rapacious Protestant neighbour was 
about to bring against him a Bill of Discovery — whereby he would be compelled to 
disclose the value of his property, which on its being found to be more than the 
few acres that a papist was legally entitled to, would be confiscated to the dis- 
coverer. As, before being accepted and baptised, it was necessary to undergo a 
period of instruction by a minister of the Established Church and an examination 
by one of the ecclesiastics, Mr. Myers, for his theological study, dined every day 
for a week with a boon companion, the Protestant rector of Castlerea — after which 
a social hour's chat with the Archbishop of Dublin secured for him the certificate 
that guaranteed him to be a fit subject for "Baptism unto the true Faith." On 
the day on which he was received into the Established Church the Archbishop gave 



THE LATER PENAL LAWS 461 

But Lecky elsewhere admits that fear of the conquered people 
ever again taking rank with their conquerors likewise inspired the 
persecutions. His words are: **It was intended to make them 
poor and to keep them poor, to crush in them every germ of enter- 
prise and degrade them into a servile race who could never hope to 
rise to the level of their oppressor." The British traveller, Arthur 
Young, in the last quarter of the eighteenth century found "an 
Anglo-Irish aristocracy of half a miUion joying in the triumph of 
having two million slaves." 

Young tells how he found the gentry for little or no cause, lash 
with horsewhip or cane, or break the bones of the people, "and 
kill, without apprehension of judge or jury." "The Punishment 
Laws," says Young, "are calculated for the meridian of Barbary." ^^ 

Throughout those dark days the hunted schoolmaster, with 
price upon his head, was hidden from house to house. And in 
the summer time he gathered his little class, hungering and thirsting 
for knowledge, behind a hedge in remote mountain glen — where, 
while in turn each tattered lad kept watch from the hilltop for the 
British soldiers, he fed to his eager pupils the forbidden fruit of 
the tree of knowledge. 

Latin and Greek were taught to ragged hunted ones under shel- 
ter of the hedges — whence these teachers were known as "hedge 
schoolmasters." A knowledge of Latin was a frequent enough 
accomplishment among poor Irish mountaineers in the seventeenth 

a dinner in Myer's honour. For the edification of the guests, the good prelate at 
suitable moment requested of the spotless neophyte that he would "state to 
his fellow-diners his grounds for abjuring the errors of popery." Promptly re- 
plied Myers, "Twenty-five hundred acres of the best grounds in the County 
Roscommon." 

15 It is scarce a century since papists were for the first time permitted to re- 
side in some of the walled cities such as Derry in the North, and Bandon in the 
South. 

On the gates of Bandon was written the legend : 

"Enter here, Turk, Jew or atheist, 
Any man except a Papist." 

Underneath these lines a rascally papist, possessed of some wit and some chalk, 
tried his hand at a little "poetry" of his own : 

"The man who wrote this wrote it well ; 
For the same is writ on the gates of Hell." 

On a Government return of 1743 the Provost of Bandon reports. "Neither 
priest nor papist was, ever since the hated King James his reign, suffered to reside 
within this tov/n. The inhabitants are all Protestants and by our Corporation 
Laws no other can live among us." 

But the mills of the gods were in motion, all unknown to the pious Provost. 
To-day Bandon is an overwhelmingly Catholic town. And Derry, the very Mecca 
of Orangeism, has a Catholic majority, a Nationalist Corporation, Nationalist 
Mayor, and Nationalist representative in the Irish Parliament. 



462 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

century — and was spoken by many of them on special occasions. 
And it is authoritatively boasted that cows were bought and sold in 
Greek, in mountain market-places of Kerry.^''' 

Throughout these dreadful centuries, too, the hunted priest — 
who in his youth had been smuggled to the Continent of Europe to 
receive his training — tended the flame of faith. He lurked like a 
thief among the hills. On Sundays and feast days he celebrated 
Mass at a rock, on a remote mountainside, while the congregation 
knelt on the heather of the hillside, under the open heavens. 
While he said Mass, faithful sentries watched from all the nearby 
hilltops, to give timely warning of the approaching priest-hunter 
and his guard of British soldiers. But sometimes the troops came 
on them unawares, and the Mass Rock was bespattered with his 
blood, — and men, women and children caught in the crime of wor- 

1*5 Dr. Douglas Hyde tells of the famous Munster poet, Owen Roe O'Sullivan, 
how, while still a common farm-hand, he amazed his master's son (just returned 
from a Continental college) by construing for the latter a Greek passage that had 
puzzled him. O'Sullivan was taken from behind the spade then. And after a littU; 
while he opened, near Charleville, a school where he taught Latin and Greek. 

The present writer had a friend, an old mountaineer in Donegal, who told hirn 
how, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, his father, then a youth, used tu 
hear at "the Priest's Dinner" in the mountain station house, the priest, the school- 
master, and many of the well-to-do mountaineers discourse in Latin. 

To these hedge schoolmasters who at the cost of their happiness and risk of 
their lives fed the little flame of knowledge among the hills and glens of Ire- 
land, throughout Ireland's dread night, Ireland can never repay her debt. 

THE HEDGE SCHOOLMASTERS 

When the night shall lift from Erin's hills, 'twere shame if we forget 
One band of unsung heroes whom Freedom owes a debt. 
When we brim high cups to brave ones then, their memory let us pledge 
Who gathered their ragged classes behind a friendly hedge. 

By stealth they met their pupils in the glen's deep-hidden nook, 
And taught them many a lesson was never in English book ; 
There was more than wordy logic shown to use in wise debate; 
Nor amo was the only verb they gave to conjugate. 

When hunted on the heathery hill and through the shadowy wood, 

They climbed the cliff, they dared the marsh, they stemmed the tumbling flood ; 

Their blanket was the clammy mist, their bed the wind-swept bent ; 

In fitful sleep they dreamt the bay of blood-hounds on their scent. 

Their lore was not the brightest, nor their store, mayhap, the best, 

But they fostered love, undying, in each young Irish breast; 

And through the dread, dread night, and long, that steeped our island then. 

The lamps of hope and fires of faith were fed by these brave men. 

The grass waves green above them; soft sleep is theirs for aye; 

The hunt is over, and the cold ; the hunger passed away. 

O hold them high and holy ! and their memory proudly pledge, 

Who gathered their ragged classes behind a friendly hedge. — Seumas MacManu.s 



THE LATER PENAL LAWS 463 

shipping God among the rocks, were frequently slaughtered on the 
mountainside/^ 

Then, bishops and archbishops, meanly dressed In rough home- 
spuns, trudged on foot among their people — and often dwelt, ate 
and slept, In holes in the ground/^ 

Thus, in their miserable lairs, in the bogs and barren moun- 
tains, whither they were trailed by wolf-hounds and blood-hounds, 
were sheltered all that was noble, high, and holy, in Ireland — 
while rascal and renegade, silk-and-fine-linen-clad, fattening on the 

^^ To enable the members of their congregation to baffle the inquisition before 
which they were Hable at any time to be compelled to swear when and where they 
last attended Mass and who was the priest that officiated, an improvised curtain 
v»^as oftentimes hung between the celebrant and the worshippers — so that they could 
truthfully swear they did not see the celebrant. With the same object in view, 
at the ordination of priests not the bishop alone laid on hands, but several others 
together with him. 

1* Edmund Spenser, in his day observing all this, "did marvel" how these 
hunted priests, foregoing all the comforts and pleasures of life, and inviting both 
life and death's fearfulest terrors, pursued their mission "without hope of reward 
and richesse." 

"Reward and richesse !" exclaims the non-Catholic Mitchel, commenting on 
this. "I know the spots within my own part of Ireland where venerable arch- 
bishops hid themselves, as it were, in a hole of the rock. . . . Yet it was with full 
knowledge of all this, with full resolution to brave all this, that many hundreds of 
educated Irishmen, fresh from the colleges of Belgium or of Spain, pushed to the 
Sea Coast at Brest or St. Malo, to find some way of crossing to the land that of- 
fered them a life of work and of woe. Imagine a priest ordained at Seville or 
Salamanca, a gentleman of high old name, a man of eloquence and genius, who 
has sustained disputations in the college halls on questions of literature or theology, 
and carried off prizes and crowns — see him on the quays of Brest, bargaining with 
some skipper to work his passage. He throws himself on board, does his full 
part of the hardest work, neither feeling the cold spray nor the fiercest tempest. 
And he knows, too, that the end of it all, for him, may be a row of sugar canes 
to hoe under the blazing sun of Barbados. Yet he pushes eagerly to meet his 
fate ; for he carries in his hands a sacred deposit, bears in his heart a holy message, 
and must tell it or die. See him, at last, springing ashore, and hurrying on to 
seek his bishop in some cave, or under some hedge — but going with caution by 
reason of the priest catcher and the blood-hounds." 

In the middle of the seventeenth century the Primate of Ireland lived in a 
little farmhouse under the name of "Mr. Ennis." The bishop of Kilmore, who 
was a good musician, travelled his diocese as a Highland bagpiper. And other 
ecclesiastics assumed what disguise suited their bent. The Archbishop of 
"Tuam used to address his letters from his (undisclosed) "place of refuge in Conne- 
mara." 

The learned and saintly Bishop Gallagher (still famed for his sermons), a 
noble and beautiful character, had many escapes in his unending peregrinations, 
travelling stick in hand, and homespun clad, among his flock — sleeping sometimes 
in human habitation, sometimes in a hole in the bank and frequently among the 
beasts of the field. Once when he had the good fortune to be sheltered under a 
poor Foof in Donegal, he was aroused in the middle of the night by the alarm that 
the priest-hunters were close upon him. Half-clad, he escaped — but the poor man 
who had been guilty of housing him was taken out and cruelly done to death. 
After this Bishop was translated to the midlands, the Palace of this learned and 
truly noble man was a bothy built against a bank in the Bog of Allen ! 



464 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

fat of an anguished land, languished in the country's high seats of 
honour ! ^° 

From time to time, to satisfy itself that the Penal Laws were 
being enforced, the Government called for returns on the subject, 
which returns, still preserved with the other State records, throw 
interesting side-light upon the Penal activities. The returns, for 
instance, of 17 14, made by the High Sherijfts of counties and 
Mayors of cities, show the number of priests and schoolmasters 
then held in various jails, and in apology for the numbers not be- 
ing more impressive, explain that the fugitive priest and school- 
master are "difficult to take." A High Sheriff of Longford re- 
ports holding in jail: "Patrick Ferrall and John Lennan, con- 
victed of being popish schoolmasters, and sentenced to transporta- 
tion." The Fligh Sheriff of Dublin holds "two popish school- 
masters under sentence of transportation." The Mayors of Gal- 
way and Kilkenny have priests awaiting transportation. The High 
Sheriff of Wicklow reports the dispersal of "a riotous assembly" 
at St. Kevin's in Glendalough — meaning the ancient pilgrimage in 
honour of St. Kevin. "We rode all right," he says, "and reached 
the scene at 4 A. M. on June 3rd. The rioters immediately dis- 

^° It is good to record that many and many a time during the centuries of Ire- 
land's agony, decent God-fearing, truly Christian Protestants hid the hunted priest 
when the bloodhounds, and human hounds, were close upon him, saving the hunted 
one's life at the risk of his own. 

And many a time, too, the decent Protestant — sometimes a poor man — accepted 
legal transfer of the lands of his Catholic neighbour and held them for his 
Catholic neighbour's benefit — thus saving them from being forfeited to a "Dis- 
coverer." 

There was a poor Protestant blacksmith in Tipt)erary in Penal times, who, to 
save their property to his Catholic neighbours, was in legal possession of thousands 
of acres of land. Yet the brave fellow, with all those broad acres at his mercy, 
lived and died in proud poverty. 

The late date down to which these persecutions were carried may be judged 
from the fact that the present Irish Primate's predecessor. Archbishop McGettigan, 
used to tell how, as a lad, at the Mass Rock in the mountain, he acted as sentry, 
as acolyte, and as candle-stick (one of the two boys who at either side of the altar- 
rock held the lighted candle and shielded it from the wind). 

On the occasion of a recent lecture tour in California, I met, in a valley of 
the Sierras, a middle-aged Donegal man, who told me how, when he was a little 
boy in Donegal, a man with a much disfigured face came one day to his father's 
house, of whom his father told him how he had escaped with only this dis- 
figurement from a Mass Rock massacre — when the priest-hunters and soldiers had, 
unawares, surprised the congregation in their crime. 

Even in recent days, in some of the remote parts of Ireland, often the local 
representatives of the governing power, the landlord and magistrate, would not 
permit the erection of a Catholic Qiurch within the district of which he was 
over-lord. The Church of the famous Father ^IcFadden of Gweedore, had to be 
erected on a No-man's land, the dead-line between the possessions of two English 
landlords — a gulch which had been the bed of a mountain torrent — now diverted. 
On a fatal stormy Sunday in the eighties the torrent, finding its old wa^ again, 
swept down upon the little chapel, packed with its mountain congregation, and 
left sad hearts and lone hearths in bleak Gweedore. 



THE LATER PENAL LAWS 465 

persed : and we pulled down their tents, threw down and demolished 
their superstitious crosses, destroyed their wells, and apprehended 
and committed one Toole, a popish schoolmaster." 

In 1 73 1 the bishops of the Established Church made inter- 
esting returns for the "Report of the State of Popery in Ireland." 
Sample returns for parishes in the diocese of Clogher will give an 
idea of the whole. In one parish, "The papists have one altar 
made of earth and stone, uncovered." In another parish, "Mass 
is celebrated in ye open fields at two distant places." In a third, 
"No Mass house, but two or three altars." And in still another 
parish, "No Mass house but y« people meet in ye fields — Owen 
O'Gallagher, an old Fryer, instructs a great many popish students." 
In another, "Edward McGrath and one Connelly officiate in sev- 
eral parts of ye parish, in woods near ye mountains." Henry, 
Bishop of Derry, reports: "We are frequently infested with 
strolling Fryars and Regulars who say Mass from Parish to Par- 
ish as they pass, in ye open fields or ye mountains, and gather 
great numbers of people about them. Sometimes a straggling 
schoolmaster sets up in some of ye mountains, but upon being 
threatened, as they constantly are, with a warrant or a present- 
ment by ye church-wardens, they generally think it proper to 
withdraw." 

And the Bishop of Down and Connor reports: "Dr. Arm- 
in this writer's own parish of Inver, a relic of the Penal Days was with us 
till he had reached mature manhood. It was a scalan — a three-walled thatched 
Mass-shed which sheltered the altar and the officiating priest. In front of the 
open end, every Sunday mornirag, the congregation, gathered hither from miles of 
moor and mountain, knelt on fhe bare hillside under the open heavens — often with 
miry slush soaking their knees, and pelting rain or driving hail mercilessly lash- 
ing their bodies, and whipping their upturned faces. Whether blowing or snowing, 
shining or showering, every Sabbath saw there the crowd of devotees from remote 
homes — man and woman, boy and girl, barefoot child and crawling old. 

In the days when this writer, a light-footed bouchaUlin, scudded the moors 
to Mass, there mothered England and step-mothered Ireland, a respectable, homely- 
minded lady, who had developed a comfortable embonpoint, and fattened a very 
large brood of children, at the expense of poor, lean, famished, famine-haunted 
Ireland — a worthy enough old lady who represented the power that robbed us of 
everything except our hardships, and bestowed on us nothing but our poverty. 
About the very time that our scalan congregation would be kneeling in the mud 
on the arctic shoulder of Ardaghey Hill this good old lady and her middling well- 
trained children would probably be bogging their knees in the yielding plush of 
their prie-dicux, in the magnificent Chapel of Buckingham Palace — or before a 
comforting fire, languidly sinking out of one another's sight in the caressing up- 
holstery of their Palace drawing-room. And the writer can vividly remember the 
queer questioning that started in his boyish mind one fierce February Sunday 
when, with the miserable multitude at Mass on that storm-lashed hillside, their knees 
sunk in the marrow-freezing mire, their few sorry clothes soaked through and 
plastered to their bones by snow-broth, bared heacls battered, and faces whipped 
and cut by the driving sleet, he heard the sagart (a simple saintly soul) lead in 
supplicating the Lord to grant health and happiness to, and shower His manifold 
blessings upon, "Her Majesty, the Queen of this Realm, and all the Royal Family"! 



466 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

strong ^" takes upon him to be bishop, and holds visitations at 
which there appear great numbers — the Itinerant Preachers, I sup- 
pose, making part of them. There were several of those that have 
great concourse about them." 

The marvellous spirit that inspired the young Irishmen who 
gave their lives for the preserving of their people's faith in these 
times of terror, could not be more strikingly illustrated than by 
presenting to the reader — from another Parliamentary return — 
one of the late date of 1782 — the following list of some of the 
many places, far and wide over the Continent of Europe, to which 
they penetrated in search of education and ordination. These "reg- 
istered" priests (only the smaller portion of the priestly body), 
all of them ordained between 1760-80, were educated in: 

Toledo, Barcelona, Mechlin, Paris, Brussels, Prague, Como, 
Rome, Viterbo, Treves, Compostella, Cremona, Lisbon, Toul, Bor- 
deaux, Bazas, Sarlate (France), I^ombez (France), Antwerp, Liege, 
Vaison (France), Avignon, Monte Fiascone, Bagnovea, Or^'ieto, 
Dol, Spire. Toulouse, Sarni, Arczzo (Tuscany), Nepi (Italy), St. 
Lizie, St. Papule (France), Pampelona (Spain), Zaragossa, Placence 
(Italy), Puy, Ypres, Dizd, Seville, Nantes, Rennes, St. Male, 
Chalons, Vienna, Ageu (France), Orte, Azola, Elvas (Portugal), 
Louvain, Milan, Crema (State of Venice), Montpellier, Perpignan, 

*o The following few lines from The Will of this Dr. Armstrong (who "takes 
upon him to be Bisliop") who died in 1739, is an interesting commentary on the 
man, his office, his circumstances, and his time. These are some typical extracts 
from the whole, as printed in Archivium Hibernicum I (It is to be remembered 
that while the will had to be made in English — in compliance with form — this man, 
like almost all the learned Irish of his day, probaMy knew little or nothing of 
the English language, while in all likelihood, he cou^.d freely converse in French, 
Italian, Latin, and perhaps Greek) — 

"I order my horse, and my oats, and my pewter, foure chears, and the furr 
table, and my six new shirts to be sould in order to defray my funeral! expenses 
and to pay my just and lawfull details. 

"I order John Taylor of Ballyverly thirteen pence. 

"I order the Convent of Castlewilliam one moydore and the Convent of 
Dromenecoil one guinea. 

"I order Jon. O'Doherty, my servant, my wearing cloathes, and my mare, and 
both my sadels and bridels, my little oake table and my Dixonary. 

"I order Patt O'Doharty my bed and bed cloathes, my oveal table, my two pots, 
and my gridle, and a grediron. 

"I order Neale Armstrong and Mary Donevan my ould lennin and my three 
chists and two bed steds. I order Neale the green drogged. 

"I order Henry Armstrong my big coat. 

"I order the Rev. Mr. Patt Byrne and the Rev. Mr. Edward Jennings my 
books. 

"I order Meary Doharty fifteen shillings. I order Anne KiUin two shillings 
and eight pence halfpenny. 

"I order the Rev. Mr. Jon. Fitzsimons my vestments, and my hat, and the 
shute of cloaths that Mrs. Russell gave me, and he to say sixty Masses to her 
intention. 

"I order Oliver Taylor one shilling and one penny, if my substance will af- 
ford it." 



THE LATER PENAL LAWS 467 

Santiago (Spain), Macoa, Caizo (Naples), Orleans, Clermont, Ca- 
serta, Naples, Besangcn, Emesenus, Bayeux, Jaen (Spain), Cordova, 
Genoa, Nauli (Italy), Segovia, Brabant, Valladolid, St. Ildefaro, 
Zamora (Spain), Doiiai (Flanders), Arras, St. Omer, Rheims, 
Emaus (Treves), Salamanca.^^ 

The Penal Laws were enforced with much rigour till the latter 
part of the 1 8th century. In 1773 the Anglo-Irish Parliament re- 
fused to pass a Bill making it legal for papists to lend money on 
land mortgage. In 1776 Lord Charlemont threw the House of 
Lords into a tumult when he brought in a bill to make it lawful 
for a Catholic to lease a cabin and a potato garden. He was 
dubbed "papist" and voted out of the chair for such infamous pro- 
posal. An uncle of Daniel O'Connell, Arthur O'Leary, was, near 
the century's end, shot by a soldier for refusing to sell his beautiful 
horse to a Protestant for five pounds. And O'Connell's father, 
Morgan, made his first purchase of land through the medium of a 
Protestant friend — in whose name the land had to be bought, and 
held. O'Connell's grandfather would not let Smith, when he was 
writing a history of Kerry, dilate upon the ancient greatness of 
the clan Conal. "There has been peace in these remote glens," he 
warned Smith. "Do not draw the attention of the authorities to 
us." 

In 1775 the English traveller, Twiss, was saddened to see 
crowds of boys learning writing on the roadside — saddened, be- 
cause, to his well-trained English mind, it was "not judicious to 
teach the lower orders." In 1776 Arthur Young everywhere met 
with schools held aback of a hedge : "I might as well say 'ditch' 
for I have seen many a ditch full of scholars," he adds." 

21 There was then (as now) an Irish College at Salamanca. Other Irish Col- 
leges were at Lisbon, St. Omer, Louvain, Douai, Tournay, Antwerp, Lauzanne, etc. 

In the above report we find, under various parishes such items as, in one par- 
ish, "One popish priest who officiates in different parts of ye parish in open air," — 
"One popish priest who officiates in ye open fields," — "One popish priest who offi- 
ciates in some open field, or some poor cabin," — ^"Several itinerant popish priests 
and friars do at some times officiate in this parish." 

22 In 1796 the French traveller de Latocnaye tells of seeing the hedge schools. 
And at the River Shannon he saw Mass being celebrated among the ruins of an 
ancient abbey — and the priests, sitting upon tombstones in a cemetery, hearing Con- 
fession, holding little flags to shield the penitents at their knee. In the first quar- 
ter of the 19th century Csesar Otway describes one of the outlawed schools which 
he saw (on Cape Clear Island). It was a low hut with no chimney, covered with 
a network of rope, and hung like a wasp's nest on the side of a cliff. He said he 
had to bend double in order to enter, as going through a cavern's mouth. Inside 
was a dark, smoky, smelly cave, where he could not at first discern anything. 
But when he was able to see he observed twenty children, sitting on stones, hum- 
ming like hornets preparing to swarm. Every urchin, he said, had a scrap of paper 
or a leaf of a book in his hand. 



468 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

In Ireland in these trying times, just as in the more glorious 
days of Ireland's golden age more than a thousand years before, 
learning and learners were held in high reverence. And the poor 
people now (as then) vied with each other in offering share of 
the little they possessed to the young students who sojourned among 
them. The Poor Scholar was honoured and loved, and was enter- 
tained free of all charge, wherever he went and howsoever long 
he stayed. Doheny in his introduction to O'Mahony's Keating 
says, "As late as 1820 there were in many counties classical schools 
in which the English tongue was never heard." The languages 
were Irish, Latin and Greek. Furthermore, down to his own day 
(middle of the 19th century), 

"Literary hospitality continued unimpaired. The ablest masters, 
classical and scientific, have taught thousands of students who for 
years were entertained with the most lavish kindness in the houses 
of the farmers in the districts around the schools, of lats a barn or 
deserted dwelling of mudwall or thatched roof. In Tipperary, 
Waterford, and Limerick it was usual to have two of these scholars 
living (free) for four and five consecutive years with a family, and 
treated with extreme courtesy and tenderness. In the first cycle of 
this century there was scarcely a farmer of any competency who did 
not give one son or all of his sons, a classical education, without any 
reference to intended professions or pursuits." 

The Volunteer movement in the 1780's first began to take 
the edge off Protestant prejudice — which had been so astonishingly 
narrow and bitter that Burke states in his letter to Langrishe, 
"There are thousands in Ireland who never conversed with a Ro- 
man Catholic in their whole life unless they happened to talk to 
their gardeners' workmen, or to ask their way when they had lost 
it in their sports." On all occasions, in conversation or in writing, 
and in all ofl'lcial documents, including the King's speeches and 
Acts of Parliament Catholicism was referred to as popery, and 
Catholics always named either papists or "persons professing the 
popish religion." In 1793 all good Protestants of both England 
and Ireland gasped to find the term Catholic employed in a speech 
from the Throne! Revolution was then in the air, and it was 
wisdom and statesmanship to begin to rub the papist with the fur. 
And in that year, of 1793, was passed an Act "^ relieving the Cath- 

23 In the debate on that Bill of 1793, it is good to find — standing out ^rom 
among the Protestant bishops, who usually led in hatred of Catholicism — the hign- 
rainded Protestant bishop of Killala. In his speech in the House of Lords he ex- 
pressed sentiments that did credit to his Christian heart — "I look upon our Catholic 



THE LATER PENAL LAWS 469 

olics of many of their disabilities — in theory at least. Another 
thirty-six years were to elapse before the next step was taken, un- 
der compulsion from the O'Connell agitation, and the Act known 
as Catholic Emancipation made law. 

Burke's Tract on the Popery Code. 
Burke's Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe. 
McGee's Protestant Reformation in Ireland. 
Simon Butler's Digest of the Popery Laws. 
Lecky's History of Ireland in 18th Century, 
Scully's Penal Laws. 

brethren as fellow subjects and fellow Christians, believers in the same God, and 
partners in the same redemption. Speculative differences in some points of faith, 
with me are of no account : they and I have but one religion — the religion of Chris- 
tianity. Therefore, as children of the same Father — as travellers on the same 
road — and seekers of the same salvation, why not love each other as brothers? It 
is no part of Protestantism to persecute Catholics; and without justice to the 
Catholics there can be no security of the Protestant establishment. As a friend, 
therefore, to the permanency of this establishment, to the prosperity of the country, 
and the justice due to my Catholic brethren, I shall cheerfully give my vote that 
the Bill be committed." 

The Christian character of the papist-hating English appointees who usually 
filled the chairs of the Irish Protestant bishoprics, may be guessed at from Dean 
Swift's description of them: "Excellent and moral man had been selected upon 
every occasion of a vacancy, but it unfortunately happened that as these worthy 
divines crossed Hounslow Heath, on their way to Ireland, they were set upon by 
highwaymen, who frequented the Common, robbed and murdered — who seized 
their robes and patents, came over to Ireland, and were consecrated bishops in 
their stead." 



CHAPTER LIV 
"the wild geese" 

War-battered dogs are we, 
Fighters in every clime; 
Fillers of trench and of grave, 
Mockers bemocked by time. 
War-dogs hungry and grey, 
Gnawing a naked bone, 
Fighters in every clime — 
Every cause but our own. 

— Emily Lawless, "With the Wild Geese." 

"The bright as contrasted with the dark side of the national story," 
O'Callaghan calls his own record of the Irish Brigades in the Ser- 
vice of France. "Ormuzd abroad to compensate for Ahriman at 
home." ^ Lecky, too, affirms that it is in the continental Catholic 
countries, where the Irish exiles and their children had risen to 
posts of the highest dignity and power, and not amid the "outcasts 
and pariahs" in the motherland, "the real history of Irish Catholics 
during the first half of the eighteenth century is to be found." 

Ireland herself has never taken this view of the question. 
Again and again she has caught 

"echoing down the wind 
Blown backwards from the lips of Fame" 

the names of her exiled children : Marshals of France like Lord 
Clare, Prime Ministers of Spain like Don Ricardo Wall, creators 
of victorious armies like Count Peter Lacy in Russia, mighty war 
lords like Field Marshal Brown, in Austria; founders of empire 
like Count Lally in India, leaders of European diplomacy like 
Tyrconnell, O'Mahony, Lawless and de Lacy. So their titles, loud- 
sounding, came to her, borne on the trumpet music of the world's 
applause. But Ireland had a name of her own for them. Ran- 

1 Ormuzd was in Persian mythology "the good principle" as opposed to Ahriman, 
"the bad." 

470 



"THE WILD GEESE" 471 

sacking all nature for its most desolate image to figure forth her 
thought of them, its most desolate cry to render the wailing music 
made in her ears by their last farewell, she called them na Geana 
Fiadhaine, "the Wild Geese." 

"She said: 'Not mine, not mine that fame 

Far over sea, far over land 

They won it yonder, sword in hand.' " 

Not hers in truth that fame. Hardly one of them — field-marshal, 
diplomat, prime minister, empire-builder, was able to do for her 
the slightest service, or even to win for her the sympathy (much 
less the active help) of the nations to which they had given their 
all in life and in death. To Ireland, and to those who look at 
history through her eyes, the story of the "Wild Geese" is a trag- 
edy — stately and stirring, and noble if you will, in Its grandiose 
setting and majestic movement — but almost unredeemed, and the 
essence of that tragedy is, like the poignant and vain regret for the 
life blood of Sarsfield spilled at Landen, "that this was not for 
Ireland." Only one service the "Wild Geese" did for their own 
country. Always the hope remained with her that one day they 
would return, and avenge her wrongs on her iniquitous oppressor. 
And that hope gave her courage to endure. Eighteenth century 
Irish poetry is buoyant with it: 

"The Wild Geese shall return, and we'll welcome them home 

So active, so armed, so flighty, 

A flock was ne'er known to this island to come 

Since the days of Prince Fionn the mighty. 

They will waste and destroy, 

Overturn and o'erthrow, 

They'll accomplish whate'er may In man be! 

Just heaven they will bring 
Devastation and woe 
On the hosts of the tyrannous Senghan Buidhe." 

Surely, of all Ireland's sorrows, none was greater than seeing 
her boys go forth from her, year after year, to serve as cannon- 
fodder for foreign princes — their departure as fixed a moment in 
the sorrowful calendar of her seasons, as the annual flight of the 
wild geese, when even the stubble had withered from her wintry 
fields. 

Mrs. Morgan John O'Connell gives us, In The Last Colonel 
of the Irish Brigade, a lively picture of such a departure from 
the coast of Kerry about the year 1761. The fleet little smuggling 



472 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

clipper that recently slipped into Derrynane harbour has unloaded 
its wines, teas, tobaccos, brandies, its velvets and silks for the ladies, 
its gilt mirrors for their parlours, and has taken on its return 
cargo, contraband Irish wool. But another portion of its cargo — 
more precious, equally contraband — remains to be shipped. "Of 
the productions of Ireland, the wool and the men, rendered equally 
incapable by law of becoming the great sources of wealth they might 
have been at home, were in request for the manufactories and 
the armies in France." The skipper would be ill-satisfied with his 
run if he were not bearing back with him to France a number of 
clean-limbed, gallant Irish lads to fill the ranks of The Brigade. 
Here they come: O'Connells, MacCarthies, O'Sullivans, 
O'Donoghues, sons of the noblest families of the South; and as 
their barque weighs anchor, they hear a voice raised in a sorrowful 
song of farewell that might be the voice of Ireland herself. It is 
Maire Ni Dhuibh,' mother of one of these young "Wild Geese" 
(of him destined afterwards to make history as Count Daniel 
O'Connell, "Last Colonel of the Irish Brigade in the French Serv- 
ice," and kins-woman of all the others, who is standing there by 
the shore singing to a poignant old Gaelic strain, her lament for 
the passing of all this youth from Irish soil. 

The O'Connell correspondence — thanks to Mrs. Morgan John 
O'Connell — enables us to follow in some detail the further fortunes 
of the young emigrants. We will suppose that the smuggling 
craft, built for speed and lightness, has skimmed safely through 
the rocks and shallows of the Smuggler's Sound, outraced the 
Revenue Cutter in the open seas, and made in safety its destined 
port. If she had a recruiting ofl'icer of the Brigade ^ on board 
he would take the more mature of his young recruits straight to his 
regiment. The other little boys, sons of wealthier households, 
were boarded for a time, at their families' expense, with some 
retired officer of the Brigade, who made a regular business of 
keeping a sort of preparatory school for lads of this class, taught 
them languages, and the rudiments of a military education and saw 
that they attended classes for the rest. And so the years passed 

- Maine Ni Dhuibh, the grandmother of Dan O'Connell, "The Liberator," was a 
poetess of exceptional gift These she transmitted to her children. There is nothing 
finer in any literature than the wonderful "Lament" composed by her daughter, 
"dark Eighlin," for her murdered husband, Art O'Leary. 

3 The post was one of much danger. Recruiting for the Brigade was punish- 
able under English law with death. The most famous victim of this law was Morty 
Og O'Sullivan, the hero of the famous caoine, translated by O'Callanan and be- 
ginning: "The sun in Iveara no longer shines brightly." Caught after a gallant 
defence of his castle he was tied to a boat and dragged through the sea from 
Bearhaven to Cork, where his head was cut of? and affixed on the Jail. 



"THE WILD GEESE" 473 

until the boy was old enough to be enrolled as a subaltern in the 
regiment of his choice. 

Some well authenticated figures will give us an idea of the 
enormous drainage on Irish man power during this period. L'Abbe 
MacGeoghegan, the historian, himself a chaplain of the Irish 
Brigade in the French Service, estabUshed as a result of researches 
made at the French War Office, that no less than 450,000 Irish- 
men died for France in the half-century between the Fall of Lim- 
erick (1691) and the year of Fontenoy (1745). Cardinal Man- 
ning states that another half-million shed their blood for her during 
the half-century that followed, until the dissolution of the Brigade 
(1792). Twenty-thousand Irish soldiers followed Sarsfield to 
France and by the date of the Peace of Utrecht ( 1713) less than a 
quarter of them remained alive. The five-and-a-half thousand fight- 
ing men, who had been sent to France, before King Louis would 
consent to despatch a single soldier to Ireland, had been almost 
wiped out in the famous campaigns against the Vaudois. 

Though French Kings in court and in battlefield, and French 
generals in their despatches, were lavish enough in their praises of 
the Irish, French historians from Voltaire downward have failed 
to do our countrymen justice. You might read through a library 
of them without suspecting all that France owes to Ireland. "Mes 
braves Irlandais," King Louis called them to Major O'Mahony, 
when the latter had been chosen to bear to Versailles the news of 
the Irish defence of Cremona (1702), of which he himself was 
the hero. After the victory of Marsaglia, Catinat writes enthusi- 
astically of the "surprising things" done by the Irish dragoons, 
who broke the famous bayonet charge of the Savoyards and drove 
them from the field. Marshal Vendome eulogised Irish heroism 
after many a combat. From the field of Cassano he praised their 
"exemplary valour and intrepidity," and affirmed that they formed 
a band "whose zeal and devotion might be relied upon in the most 
difficult emergencies of war." He had long before appraised Irish 
valour at Barcelona, and Chevalier de Bellerive, writing in 17 10, 
records the Marshal's "particular esteem for this warlike nation, 
at whose head he had delivered so many combats and gained so 
many victories," and his confessio-n of surprise at "the terrible enter- 
prises" the Irish had achieved in his presence. 

But on the whole, France has taken her obligations to Ireland 
lightly enough, and if we would seek a fitting appreciation of 
what our poor boys did for her we must turn to a rather unexpected 
quarter — "a letter to the Right Honourable Sir Robert Sutton, for 
Disbanding the Irish Regiments in the Service of France and 



474 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Spain," written by the Whig pamphleteer Forman, from Amster- 
dam in 1727. He speaks of the Irish regiments "a*s seasoned to 
dangers, and so perfected in the art of war, that not only the 
Sergeants and Corporals, but even the private men can make very 
good officers. In what part of the army soever they have been 
placed, they have always met with success, and upon several occa- 
sions, won honour, where the French themselves, warlike as they 
are, have received an affront. To their valour, in a great measure, 
France owes not only moist of what trophies she gained in the late 
war, but even her o-wn preservation." He goe,s on to enumerate 
the Irish services: the victories won against the Duke of Savoy, 
the extraordinary affair of Cremona. "They wrested Cremona 
out of the hands of Eugene, when by surprise, he had made himself 
master of all the town, except the Irish quarters, and saw the 
Marshal, Duke de Vllleroy, his^ prisoner, who was taken by Colonel 
MacDonnell, an Irishjnan in the Emperor's service. By that 
action, hardly to be paralleled In history, they saved the whole 
French army on that side of the Alps. At Spireback, Major- 
General Nugent's Regiment of Horse, by a brave charge upon two 
regiments of cuirassiers^ brought a complete victory to an army, 
upon which Fortune was jirst turning her back. At Ramillles, the 
Allies lost but one pair of colours,* which the Royal Irish in the 
service of France took from a German regiment. At TouIcmi, 
Lieutenant-General Dillon distinguished himself,- and chiefly con- 
tributed to the preservation of that important place. To the Irish 
regiments also, under the conduct of that intrepid and experienced 
officer. Count Medavi himself very generously attributed the vic- 
tory over the Imperialists in Italy. And the poor Catalans will 
for ever have reason to remember the name of Mr. Dillon, for the 
great share he had in the famous Siege of Barcelona, so fatal to 
their nation. Sir Andrew Lee, Lieutenant-General, showed likewise 
how consummate a soldier he was, when he defended Lisle, under 
the Due de Boufflers, against those thunderbolts of war, the Prince 
of Savoy, and our own invincible Duke of Marlborough." 

To the trophies won for France by Irish bravery previous to 
the date of this letter (1727) I'Abbe MacGeoghegan, writing in 

4 This was the celebrated flag long preserved at the Convent of the "Irish Dames 
of Ypres" referred to by Davis in his "Clare's Dragoons": 

"When on Ramillies' bloody field, 
The baffled French were forced to yield; 
The victor Saxon backward reeled, 
Before the charge of Clare's Dragoons. 
The flags we conquered in that fray 
Look lone in Ypres' choir they say," etc. 



"THE WILD GEESE" 475 

1758, has a long list to add: Having enumerated Neerwinden, 
(or Landen), Marsaglia, Barcelona, Cremona, Spires, Castiglione, 
Almanza, Villa, Viciosa as "witnesses of their (the Irishmen's) im- 
mortal valour," he goes on to recall to them the more recent glories 
of Fontenoy (1745), that great day for ever memorable in the 
annals of France. "Let me remind you," he says to the Irish 
troops to whom he dedicates his History of Ireland, "of the plains 
of Fontenoy, so previous to your glory — those plains where, in 
concert with chosen French troops, the valiant Count of Tho- 
mond being at your head you charged with so much valour an 
enemy so formidable. Animated by the presence of the august 
sovereign who rules over you, you contributed with so much success 
to the gaining of a victory which till then appeared doubtful. 
Laufeld beheld you, two years afterwards, in concert with one of 
the most illustrious corps of France, force intrenchments which ap- 
peared to be impregnable. Menin, Ypres, Tournay saw you crown 
yourselves with glory under their walls; whilst your countrymen 
under the Standards of Spain performed prodigies of valour at 
Campo Sancto and a.t Velletri. But whilst I am addressing you, 
a part of your corps (th« Regiment of Fitz James) is flying to the 
defence of the allies of Louis; another (Count Lally and his regi- 
ment) is sailing over the se'as to seek amidst the waves, in another 
hemisphere, the eternal enemies of his empire — the British." 

He did not know, the good Abbe, that the service of Count 
Lally, after unheard of labours, the display of the greatest ardour, 
disinterestedness, fidelity and perseverance, in the endeavour to 
establish a French Empire in India, were to be rewarded by an 
imprisonment of nearly four years in the Bastille — and death, 
amidst every species of indignity, at the hands of the common exe- 
cutioner ! 

It is hard to imagine how the Irish remained in the French 
service after this atrocious treatment of this, their countryman to 
whom France owed amongst other' victories, the glory of Fontenoy. 
The wonder becomes all the greater when we read in the corre- 
spondence of many of them which has come down to us, how dis^ 
satisfied they were with their treatment and prospects. Neverthe- 
less, the Irish Brigade still remained on until its dissolution by the 
Revolution in. 1791. 

In 1792 the Count de Provence (afterwards Louis XVIII) 
presented the remnant of the Brigade with a "farewell banner," 
bearing the device of an Irish Harp embroidered with shamrocks 
and fleurs-de-lis. The gift was accompanied by the following 
address : — 



476 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

"Gentlemen, we acknowledge the inappreciable services that 
France has received from the Irish Brigade, in the course of the last 
100 years; services that we shall never forget, though under an im- 
possibility of requiting them. Receive this Standard, as a pledge of 
our rAnembrance, a monument of our admiration, and of our respect, 
and in future, generous Irishmen, this shall be the motto of your 
spotless flag: — 

1692—1792 
Semper et ubique Fidelis." 

Dr. Sigerson has pointed out the very curious effect which 
close connection with "the Brigade" had on iMunster at the time 
of the '98 Rising. "The fact that Munster did not join generally 
in the Insurrection of 1798 has not been understood by writers. 
Its quiescence was the result, not of loyalty to the Irish Parliament 
or Government, then in the hands of a cabal, but of Its Jacobite and 
anti-Jacobin principles. Many families had kinsmen in 'La Brigade 
Irlandaise,' and were Royalists." This observation Is quite just, 
and explains many things: the fact that Daniel O'Connell's uncle, 
old "Hunting Cap,'' claimed a reward for conveying to the Govern- 
ment the first news of the appearance of Wolfe Tone and the 
French In Bantry Bay; his nephew, Dan's Whiggery and the de- 
plorable pronouncement of many of the Irish Bishops (educated 
in France), after the failure of the Rising. 

The Irish Officers who threw In their lot with the Revolution, 
were mostly Connacht, Ulster and Leinstermen. Among whom 
may be named: General O'Moran, Charles Jennings, afterwards 
Baron Kilmaine, and the group of Irish officers so often mentioned 
in Wolfe Tone's memoirs: Madgett, Clarke, and Shea. The name 
of the officer who was the hero of the following dramatic incident 
has not come down to us, but his nationality is sufficiently in- 
dicated : — 

A certain Irish Capuchin, Father Donovan of Cork, was a 
chaplain of a noble French family In Paris when the Revolution 
broke out. His friends fled, and he, as having been concerned 
with aristocrats, was thrown into prison. One morning, after he 
had spent the night preparing a number of his fellow-prisoners for 
death, he was suddenly called out w^ith a batch of condemned and 
trundeled off to the guillotine. Just as he was about to get his 
foot on the ladder, an officer of the French guard called out in 
Irish: "Are there any Gaels among you?" "Seven," answered 
Father Donovan, In the same language. "Then let there not be 
any fear on you," shouted the officer, and the seven were saved. 



*THE WILD GEESE" 477 

Never since the days of Hugh Roe, himself, had the knowledge 
of Irish proved such a safeguard. 

In truth it was not the "Wild Geese" who forgot the tongue 
of the Gael or let it perish. We are told that the watchwords 
and the words of command in the "Brigade" were always in 
Irish, and that officers who did not know the language before they 
entered the service found themselves of necessity compelled to learn 
it. And it was in Irish the famous war cry was composed, to which 
the exiles charged at Fontenoy: 

"Remember Limerick and Saxon Perfidy." 

Many other instances we have of these soldier-exiles' love for 
their old tongue, and the old literature. Captain 'Sorley Mac- 
Donnell, serving in the Low Countries about 1626, had a copy 
made for himself of the Fenian Tales, and to his passion for Irish 
hero-lore we owe, as Professor Eoin MacNeill reminds us, "the 
preservation of Duanaire Finn." John O'Donovan, in the appendix 
of his edition of the Four Masters, has an interesting tale to tell 
of a young Charles O'Donnell from County Mayo, who in the 
middle of the i8th century went out to seek his fortune in Austria, 
where his uncle. Count Henry O'Donnell, the "handsomest man in 
the Austrian service, and an especial favourite with the Empress" 
had risen to high rank in the Imperial Army, and won a princess 
of the royal house of Cantacuzeno for his bride. Poor Charles 
was on the point of being packed home again because he answered 
in English when the General addressed him in Irish. The kind 
Irish Friar to whom the young man related his discomfiture, advised 
him to go back to the General and speak nothing but Irish, and all 
would be well. The advice was taken, and the reassuring prophecy 
fulfilled, young Charles in his turn rising to be a Major-General 
and a Count. His initial faux-pas was all the less excusable, because 
his uncle, writing to his father Manus, had directed him to have 
whichever of his sons he intended sending to Austria carefully 
educated in the Irish language, for Count Henry desired to have 
his nephew's help in instructing his own children in the language of 
their ancestors. "The tongue being Irish, the heart must needs be 
Irish, too."^ 

^ A century later we find one of the Austrian 0''Donnells affirming that "though 
reared in Austria their hearts were rux:e the less Irish." And perhaps one of the 
reasons the Irish in the Austrian service remained so Irish is that, again acting on 
a Spenserian prescription, wherever possible, they married Irish girls. Count 
Henry's son Joseph and his cousin Theresa were hero and heroine of a very pretty 
love-story in which the Empress Maria Theresa, herself, played the part of fairy 



478 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

The great Field-Marshal, Ulrich Maximilian Count Brown — 
"whose ashes are every day watered with the tears of the soldiers 
to whom he was so dear" (I'Abbe MacGeoghegan) — was perhaps 
the greatest of the great soldiers Ireland gave to Austria — and 
that is saying much. Born in 1705 and educated in Limerick, he 
had gone out as a boy to his uncle, George Brown, who com.manded 
an Infantry Regiment in Hungary. He was present at the Siege 
of Belgrade (where his countryman, General O'Dwyer commanded 
a division), was made Colonel in 1725 (at the age of twenty) and 
in 1730, with his uncle, invested Corsica. In 1739 he was raised 
by the Emperor Charles VI. to the dignity of Field-Marshal and 
Member of the Council of War. On the accession of Maria 
Theresa, she appointed Brown one of her Privy Councillors, and 
in 1752 nominated him Generalissimo of all her forces; while the 
King of Poland, Elector of Saxony, in the following year, invested 
him with the o-rder o-f the White Eagle. At the memorable battle 
of Prague in 1757, this hero received a wound of which he expired 
in two months. 

Field-Marshal Brown was, as we have said, the most famous 
of the Irish soldiers in the Imperial Service, but there were many 
other distinguished Irishmen in the Austrian Armies, and the Im- 
perial Rulers showed the highest appreciation of their qualities. 
In a document written by the Emperor Francis I, and found among 
his papers after his death, we re;id: — "The more Irish officers 
in the Austrian service, the better our troops will always be disci- 
plined; an Irish coward is an uncommon character, and even what 
the natives of Ireland dislike, they generally perform through a 
desire of glory." "Such is our established reputation," said Colonel 
O'Shea, a veteran officer of the Austrian army, "that Arch-Duke 

God-mother. The Imperial Lady was fond of doing so, and, what is better, showed 
herself a real human mother to the Iri^h girls who went out as brides to Officers 
in her Majesty's armies. Mrs. Morgan John O'Connell tells a charming story of 
the homely way the Empress comforted one of tlie O'Connell girls, the young wife 
of Major O'Sullivan, whom she found one day sobbing out her poor homesick heart 
in a dark corner of the Chaf)el of the Imperial Palace. It may have been the Em- 
press who suggested Father Bonaventure O'Brien, guardian of the Irish Franciscan 
Convent at Prague, as a suitable matchmaker when "General Brown, son and heir 
to the late Marshal of that name," thought of seeking a wife among his Irish kin- 
folk? A letter of Father O'Brien's to "Hunting Cap" O'Connell shows the good 
will with which Father Bonaventure entered on his mission. It would appear that 
Lord Kenmare's daughter was suggested, and Father Bonaventure writes to ask 
Maurice O'Connell "how old she was, her humour and other qualities, also her 
fortune." The General on his side was a very eligible parti. "He has a charming 
estate in this Kingdom, and his post besides, brings him in a thousand a year." 

The match did not come off, perhaps for the reason that tJie little maid was 
less than twelve years old when her Austrian cousin sought her hand. She eventually 
married the Marquis de Syverac, and brought him an immense fortune, according to 
the standard of those days. 



"THE WILD GEESE" 479 

Charles said to me that never was the House of Austria better 
served than when possessing so many Irish, of whom at one time 
upwards of 30 were Generals." There have been no less than 
14 Irish Field-Marshals in the Austrian Service at various times. 
On Saint Patrick's Day, in the year 1765, the Spanish Ambassador 
to the Court of Vienna, gave a grand entertainment in honour of 
the Apostle of Ireland, to which were invited only persons of 
Irish descent. The Ambassador himself was an O'Mahony, son 
of the hero of Cremona, and the illustrious assembly included 
Count de Lacy, President of the Austrian Council of War, 
Generals O'Donnell, MacGuire, O'Kelly, Brown, Plunkett and 
MacEligott, four Chiefs of the Grand Cross, two Governors, 
several Knights Military, six Staff Officers, four Privy Councillors 
with the principal Officers of State, who to show their respect for 
the Irish Nation, wore crosses in honour of the day, as did the 
whole court. 

Many of the Irish Officers in Austria had relatives in the Rus- 
sian Army, or had served in it themselves. Thus v/e find in Russia, 
Nugents, O'Rourkes, Browns, and de Lacys. Count Peter de 
Lacy, born in Limerick, first entered the French service, passed 
thence into the Polish, and was presented by the Polish Count de 
Croy to Peter the Great, who was then in alliance with Poland. 
"The Czar took him into his own service, in which he obtained 
a Majority in 1705, and a Lieutenant Colonelcy in the following 
year. In 1708 he was promoted to the command of the Siberian 
Regiment of Infantry, and joined the Grand Army. He was 
wounded at the battle of Pultowa (1709), where he acted as 
brigadier. In 17 10 he distinguished himself in the attack on 
Riga. In 1737 he was appointed to command an expedition into 
the Crimea. This was the General who, according to Ferrer, 
taught the Russians to beat the army of the King of Sweden, and 
to become from the worst, some of the best soldiers in Europe. 
Before the battle of Pultowa, he advised the Czar to send orders 
that every soldier should reserve his fire until he came within a 
few yards of the enemy, in consequence of which Charles the 
Twelfth was there totally defeated, losing in that single action the 
advantage of nine campaigns of glory." He died, Governor of 
Livonia in 175 1. 

The history of the de Lacys would bring us through every 
country in Europe. Thus, Count Peter's son, Joseph, died a 
Marshal of the Austrian Army; his kinsman, Maurice, entered the 
Russian service we are told, at ten years old. He served under 
Suwarrow in the Italian campaign, in campaigns against the Turks, 



480 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

and also in the Crimea. The Lacys in Spain were numerous and 
important. The most famous was Count de Lacy, General and 
Diplomatist. Born in 1731, he commenced his military career as 
an Ensign in the Irish Brigade of Ultonia Infantry, was named 
Colonel in 1762, and a Commander of Artillery in 1780, when he 
was employed at the celebrated Siege of Gibraltar. After the Peace 
of Versailles in 1783, he was made Minister Plenipotentiary to both 
Sweden and Russia and died at Barcelona in 1792. 

The Irish Legion in Spain has a m.uch longer history than that 
in the French service, but its records have not been collected into 
a convenient form. They go back to the days when Irish soldiers, 
recruited by Sir John Perrott, were sent to the Low Countries under 
Sir William Stanley, as part of the expeditionary force led by 
Leicester to help the Dutch then in revolt against Spain (1586). 
Their leader, Stanley, having become a Catholic, surrendered 
Deventer, which he held for the Dutch, to the Spaniards, and was 
joyfully followed over to the side of the Catholic King by all his 
Irish fighting men. 

This was the nucleus of the famous Irish Legion in the Low 
Countries, which for long years kept the English in continual fear 
of an invasion of Ireland. Illustrious names illumine the lists of 
officers: Colonel Henry O'Neill, son of the great Hugh; his 
younger brother, John; "Don Hugh O'Donnell, Earl of Tyrconnell, 
page to the Infanta in Flanders," Don Tomaso Preston, and 

"The worthiest warrior of them all 
The princely Owen Roe." 

And great deeds of arms illumined its records: at Bois-le-Duc, 
Dourlen, Amiens, under Pontecarrero and Montenegro, the stu- 
pendous defence of Louvain by Preston, the no less stupendous 
achievements of Owen Roe and his men at Arras. 

The misfortunes of Ireland, her inability to provide for her 
young men at home, kept the ranks of this Legion filled. After the 
battle of Kinsale, after the confiscation and plantation of Ulster, 
the dispossessed swordsmen trooped to it in countless numbers. 
The poignant phrase of the Four Masters paints their sad lot — 
"offering themselves for hire as soldiers to foreigners, so that count- 
less numbers of the freeborn nobles of Ireland were slain in distant 
countries and were buried in strange places and unhereditary 
churches." But always the hope remained with them, that one day 
they would return and strike a blow for Ireland. As they lay one 
night outside the town of Aire, waiting to storm it on the morrow, 
their thoughts and feelings were vocal in an Irish sentence which 



"THE WILD GEESE" 481; 

pierced the darkness: — "Tomorrow we are to adventure our lives 
for the succouring of a scabbed town of the King of Spain, where 
we may lose our lives, and we cannot expect any worse if we go 
into our own country and succour it." 

And they did "go into their own country," the brave boys, and 
"succour it" with Owen Roe O'Neill! 

The triumph of Cromwell again drove many thousand trained 
soldiers to Spain and other countries — in accordance with a definite 
policy, that of "voiding the swordsmen out of the country." It is 
estimated that between 165 1 and 1654 "40,000 of the most active 
spirited men, most acquainted with the dangers and discipline of 
war" went out of Ireland to die for Princes and causes that were 
none of theirs. Of these Spain received the largest number. 

After the fall of Limerick a great number of swordsmen sailed 
to Spain, and their numbers were subsequently increased by acces- 
sion of Irish soldiers from France during the War of the Spanish 
Succession. L'Abbe MacGeoghegan enumerates the names of the 
most distinguished: "O'Mahony, MacDonnell, Lawless, the 
Lacys, the Burkes, O'Carrolls, Croftons, Comerford, Gardiners, 
and O'Connors crowned themselves with laurels on the shores of 
Tagus." 

A very remarkable Irishman in the service of Spain was Don 
Alexander O'Reilly, "Count Commander of the Spanish Armies, 
Field-Marshal, Captain-General at the Havannah; Governor and 
Lieut.-General of Louisiana, which he took possession of in 1761, 
when surrendered by the French. Born in Ireland 1725, died in 
Paris 1794. There can scarcely be found anywhere a more ro- 
mantic or exciting career than that of O'Reilly. He fought in 
Spain, Italy, Germany, France and America. He saved the King's 
life, was at the head of his armies and Government, was in disgrace 
and exile, and everywhere and always showed high spirit, the 
greatest bravery and the most devoted loyalty to the King." 

It is worthy of note that the best officers in the Spanish army 
during the War of Independence, bore Irish names. At this time 
there were three Irish Regiments in the service of Spain : Hibernia, 
Irlanda, and Ultonia. An English historian, Oman, not inclined to 
be unduly favourable to Ireland, writes : — "An astounding pro- 
portion of the officers who rose to some note during the war, bore 
Irish names, and were hereditary soldiers of fortune, who justified 
their existence by the unwavering courage which they always 
showed, in a time when obstinate perseverance was the main 
military virtue. We need only mention Blake, the two O'Donnells, 
Lacy, Sarsfield, O'Neill, O'Daly, O'Mahony, O'Donoghue. Their 



482 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

constant readiness to fight contrasts very well the behaviour of a 
good many of the Spanish Generals. No officer of Irish blood 
was ever found among the cowards." 

It is related of Don Alexander O'Reilly that it was his delight 
to visit a certain Irish College in Spain and tell the boys there that 
the dream of his life was to head a Spanish invading force and 
land in his own country to set her free. How many of the "Wild 
Geese" cherished that dream? Alas ! Alas ! It was never realised. 
Only as disembodied spirits was it granted to them to revisit the 
land of their hearts' desire. Far, far away from Ireland their 
bodies have mingled with foreign earth "and the graves in which 
they are buried are unknown." But a poet (Emily Lawless) had 
a vision of a company of them "Sailing home together from the 
last great fight! Home to Clare from Fontenoy in the morning 
light!" 

And surely it was not from Fontenoy alone, but from the 
thousand European battlefields on which Irish valour asserted itself 
that such a "singing company" set forth, and reach the shores of 
Ireland at last: 

"Mary Mother shield us! Say what men are ye 
Sweeping past so swiftly on this morning sea? 
Without sails or rowlocks, merrily we glide, 
Home to Corca Bascin on the brimming tide. 

"Jesus save you gentry! Why are ye so white 
Sitting all so strange and still in the misty light? 
Nothing ails us brother, joj^ous souls are we, 
Sailing home together on the morning sea." " 

O'Callaghan (John Cornelius) : History of the Irish Brigades in the Service 

of France. 
O'Conor (Mattliew) : Military History of the Irish Nation. 
O'Connell (Mrs. Morgan John): The Last Colonel of the Irish Brigade. 
D'Alton (John) : Illustrations, historical and genealogical of King James's 

Irish Army List. 
Mitchel: History of Ireland. 

" It must not be forgotten that the Irish Brigade in the French service joyously 
sent its quota to meet the old enemy of the race on American battlefields. The 
regiments of Dillon and Walsh came with Lafayette to strike for American 
liberty. And it is recorded that they demanded the right to be the first of the 
French service to strike Britain on American soil. 



CHAPTER LV 

THE SUPPRESSION OF IRISH TRADE 

The systematic ruthlessness with which Ireland's trade and in- 
dustries were wiped out by England, has, like the Irish Penal 
Laws, no parallel in the history of any other subject land. We 
shall briefly summarise the extraordinary story. 

In the early centuries of the Christian Era the highly civilised 
Celt was slightly inclined to trade and commerce — probably 
Stimulated thereto by the Phoenicians who carried on a large com- 
mercial intercourse with Ireland. The early Irish, the reader will 
recollect, were famous for their excellence in the arts and crafts — 
particularly for their wonderful work in metals, bronze, silver 
and gold. Ten hundred hills and bogs in Ireland constantly yield 
up testimony to this — even if we discarded the testimony of his- 
tory, story and poem. 

By the beginning of the 14th Century, the trade of Ireland 
with the Continent of Europe was important — and trading ships 
were constantly sailing between Ireland and the leading ports of 
the Continent. Irish merchants were known in the great Conti- 
nental markets. And Irish money commanded credit. 

This condition of things naturally did not suit commercial Eng- 
land. So at an early period she began to stifle Irish industry and 
trade. 

In 1339 England appointed an admiral whose duty was to 
stop traffic between Ireland and the Continent (34 Edward III, c. 
17). He must have been but indifferently successful; for a little 
more than a century later, Edward the Fourth deplores the pros- 
perity of Ireland's trade, and he orders (in 1465) that since fish- 
ing vessels from the Continent helped out the traffic with Ireland, 
these vessels should not henceforth fish in Irish waters without an 
English permit (5 Edwd. IV). 

And since even this failed to stop the stubborn Irish, In 1494 
an English law was enacted prohibiting the Irish from exporting 
any industrial product, except with Enghsh permit, and through 
an English port, after paying English fees. 

This handicap, too, failed. For, we find English merchants 

483 



484 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

In 1548, unofficially taking a hand at trying to end the traffic — ^by 
fitting out armed vessels to attack and plunder the trading ships 
between Ireland and the Continent — commercialised piracy. 

But official piracy had to be fallen back upon. Twenty years 
after, Elizabeth ordered the seizure of the whole Continental com- 
merce of Munster — much more than half of the trade of the 
Island — and a fleet under Admiral Winter was despatched to do 
the good work. In 1571 she ordered that no cloth or stuff made 
in Ireland, should be exported even to England, except by English 
men in Ireland, or by merchants approved by the Government. 
(Nearly thirty years before, her much married father, Henry, had 
forbidden Irish cloths to be exported from Galway.) 

And Irish trade was attacked from yet another angle. At the 
same time that the pirate admiral was appointed by Edward III, 
Irish coinage was forbidden to be received in England. However, 
Irish merchants and Irish money had such worthy repute that not 
only did they still succeed with it on the Continent, but, one hun- 
dred years later, Irish coinage had to be prohibited again in Eng- 
land. That was in 1447. 

In 1477, after imprisoning some Irish merchants who traded 
with Irish money in Bristol, the English Government adopted a 
radical reform by introducing into Ireland an English coinage de- 
based twenty-five per cent below the English standard, and com- 
pelled Ireland to accept it as her legal currency. 

This accomplished two good objects. English merchants 
bought in Ireland by the cheap standard and sold these purchases 
abroad by the dear standard. Also England was enabled to pay 
her army in Ireland with cheap Irish coin. When Ireland's mer- 
chants refused to honour at its face value the debased coinage 
tendered by the soldiers, an Act was passed (in 1547) making 
such refusal treason. 

By reason of their big Continental trade the shipping industry 
had in itself become an important one to Irishmen. Hence it was 
advisable to extinguish it. The Navigation Act of 1637 provided 
that all ships must clear from English ports for foreign trade. 
But as this did not sufficiently discourage Ireland, the Act was 
amended, in 1663 (15 Charles II, c. 7), to prohibit the use of all 
foreign-going ships, except such as were built in England, mastered 
and three-fourths manned by English, and cleared from English 
ports. Their return cargoes too, must be unladen In England.^ 



1 "The conveniency of ports and harbours with which nature had blessed Ire- 
land was of no more use than a beautiful prospect to a man shut up in a dungeon." 
—Sunft. 



THE SUPPRESSION OF IRISH TRADE 485 

Ireland's ship-building industry was thus destroyed, and her 
Continental trade was practically wiped out. 

Yet, Ireland, ever persevering, began, even under such heavy 
restriction, to develop a lucrative trade with the Colonies. This 
was cured in 1670 by 22 Charles II, c. 26, which forbade Ireland 
to export to the Colonies anything except horses, servants, and 
victuals ! 

Then Ireland fell back upon the little profits to be derived 
from imports from the Colonies. And England, observing this, 
put a bush in the gap (7 & 8 Wm. II, c. 22) decreeing that no 
Colonial products should be landed in Ireland — till they had first 
been landed in England and paid all English rates and duties. 
"Thus," says Newenham, "was Ireland deprived of the direct 
lucrative trade of the whole western world." 

But England must get credit for repentance. By 4 Geo. II, c. 
15, Ireland was permitted to import directly from the Plantations 
all goods, etc., of the growth, production or manufacture of the 
said Plantations, except sugar, tobacco, indigo, cotton, wool, mo- 
lasses, ginger, pitch, turpentine, tar, rice, and nine or ten other 
specified Items — which, stripped of its facetious verbiage, just means 
that she was permitted to import West Indian rum — thus aiding 
the planters and rum makers of the West Indies, at the expense 
of Irish farmers, distillers, and constitutions. 

The foregoing will seem to many readers a good English joke. 
But from constant reiteration through the centuries these Eng- 
lish jokes proved rather wearing on Ireland's health. 

The woollen joke was not the least trying. 

At a very early period Ireland had been forbidden to export 
her cattle to England, and then, turning to sheep-raising, was, by 
8 Eliz. c, 8, forbidden to export sheep. She next essayed woollen 
manufactures. 

This quickly became a great Irish Industry. In the Conti- 
nental markets, and even in the British, Irish woollens were in 
brisk demand. Consequently this trade should be stopped. 
Though, as usual. It took a long time to convince the pig-headed 
people who Inhabited Ireland that It was for their benefit to stop 
it. The good work was, for the good step-mother, a tedious and ' 
thankless task. But with praiseworthy perseverance, she persisted 
till her good end was accomplished. 

The Irish woollen manufacturers began, at an early period, to 
rival England's. So, in 1571 Elizabeth imposed restriction upon 
the Irish woollen trade that crippled the large Irish trade with 
the Netherlands and other parts of the Continent. Yet half a 



486 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

century later Lord Strafford, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, 
begs for a little more discouragement. In 1634, he writes to 
Charles the First, "That all wisdom advises to keep this (Irish) 
kingdom as much subordinate and dependent on England as pos- 
sible; and, holding them from the manufacture of wool (which 
unless otherwise directed, I shall by all means discourage), and 
then enforcing them to fetch their cloth from England, how can 
they depart from us without nakedness and beggary?" (Straf- 
ford's Letters.) 

But it was not until 1660 that was taken the radical step of 
forbidding by law the export of woollens from Ireland to Eng- 
land. When this blow fell the Irish resorted to exportation of 
their raw wool. This was stopped by 12 Charles II, c. 32, and 13 
and 14 Charles II, c. 18 — which Acts prohibited Ireland from 
exporting sheep-wool, wool-fells, mortlings, shortlings, yarn made 
of wool and wool-flocks. The Acts were thorough. 

In 1673, Sir William Temple (by request of Viceroy Essex) 
advised that the Irish would act wisely in giving up altogether 
the manufacture of wool (even for home use), becainse "it tended 
to interfere prejudicially with the English woollen trade!"" 

Now Ireland was almost completely cured of the bad habit 
of exporting both woollens and wool — almost. But a trace of 
the habit still lingered. While the British Colonies (possibly by 
oversight) had been left open to her, she continued exporting to 
them. This needed attention. So, in 1697 an act was introduced 
to prohibit Ireland from sending out any of her woollen manu- 
factures to any place, whatsoever!^ 

But it was very soon found that even this Act was incomplete. 
It inadvertently left the Irish market open to the Irish wool manu- 
facturers — which market must, of course, or ought to be the pri- 
vate property of the English manufacturers. The mistake must 
be remedied. So on June 9th, 1698, both English Houses of Par- 
liament addressed King William beseeching him to chide his Irish 
subjects for that — in the language of the Lords — "The growth 
of the woollen manufactures there hath long been, and ever will 



- This is the same English statesman who pithily put the maxim which England 
has always observed in protecting Ireland, and fostering Irish welfare — "Regard 
must be had to those points wherein the trade of Ireland comes to interfere with 
that of England, in which case Irish trade ought to be declined so as to give way 
to the trade of England." 

3 Swift said : "Ireland is the only kingdom I ever heard or read of either 
in ancient or modem story, which was denied the liberty of exporting its native 
manufactures and commodities wherever it pleased." 



THE SUPPRESSION OF IRISH TRADE 487 

be, looked upon with great jealousy by all your subjects of this 
kingdom, and if not timely remedied may occasion very strict laws 
totally to prohibit and suppress same." The impending punish- 
ment for continued wilfulness on the part of the naughty Irish 
child was going to give the noble lords more pain than it would 
the child, which was being punished for its own good. 

And the Commons in the course of their address say, "And 
therefore we cannot without trouble observe that Ireland, which 
is dependent on, and protected by, England, in the enjoyment of 
all they have, should of late apply itself to the woollen manufac- 
ture, to the great prejudice of the trade of this kingdom . . . 
make it your royal care, and enjoin all those whom you employ 
in Ireland to make it their care, and to use their utmost diligence, 
for discouraging the woollen manufacture of Ireland." And in 
token of their solicitude for the country which was "dependent 
on, and protected by England in the enjoyment of all they have," 
it was suggested that Irishmen should turn from woollens to hemp 
and linen — which England had little means of making — and which, 
more betoken, Ireland had then less means of making. 

King William answered his faithful Lords and Commons, "I 
shall do all that in my power lies to discourage the manufacture 
of woollens in Ireland." And the king was this time as good as 
his word (despite the slanders of Limerick men). In this year 
of 1698 he signed an Act to the effect that because these manu- 
factures are daily increasing In Ireland (disastrous to relate!), 
the exports of wool and woollen manufactured articles from 
Ireland are hereby forbidden under pain of forfeiture of the 
goods and ships that carried them, and five hundred pounds 
fine! 

It is worth remembering that though the mere Irish In Ireland 
were the workers, earning a subsistence at the trade, It was almost 
entirely the Anglo-Irish, the purely British-blooded people of the 
Island, who were the manufacturers — the only monied people In 
the country — and traders. They, having had the misfortune to 
be born and bred In Ireland, were penalised and striven to be 
crushed out by their own kin beyond the Irish Sea. That they 
richly deserved, however, to be throttled and robbed, is proven by 
the fact that they, servile creatures, acting at the behest of William 
and their kin beyond the water did, in September, 1698, actually 
pass in their own House of Parliament (from which the real Irish 
were carefully excluded) an act laying prohibitory duty (four 
shillings in the pound) on their own woollen manufactures — "the 



488 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

better to enable His Majesty," said they, "to provide for the safety 
of his own liege people!"* 

Except for a few little items such as coverlids and waddings 
which were overlooked in the act of William the Third — but care- 
fully attended to by his successors — the great Irish woollen manu- 
facture was now extinguished forever. But to make assurance 
doubly sure, by 5 Geo. II, c. 11, three ships of war and eight or 
more armed vessels were appointed to cruise off the coast of Ire- 
land with orders to seize all vessels venturing to carry woollens 
from Ireland. 

The Irish woollen joke was now, at last, concluded. "So 
ended," says Lecky, "the fairest promise that Ireland had ever 
known of becoming a prosperous and a happy country. The ruin 
was absolute and final." 

For a long time after this destruction of one of the country's 
chief supports, the economic conditions in Ireland were fearful. 
Swift, who had stated that "since Scripture says oppression makes 
a wise man mad, therefore, consequently speaking, the reason that 
some men in Ireland are still not mad is because they are not 
wise" — Swift thus describes the pass to which the country was 
now brought — "The old and sick are dying and rotting by cold 
and famine, and filth and vermin. The younger labourers cannot 
get work, and pine away for want of nourishment to such a de- 
gree that if at any time they are accidentally hired to commence 
labour, they have not the strength to perform it." 

When William took from Ireland its woollen manufactures, 
he promised to compensate by encouraging in its stead hemp and 
linen. And his Lx)rds Justice in their address to the Irish Houses 
of Parliament, Sept. 27, 1698, after suavely requesting the coun- 
try to commit felo de se by resigning the woollen manufacture, 
said: "Amongst these bills there is one for the encouragement 
of the linen and hemp manufactures which we recommend to you. 
The settlement of those manufactures will contribute much to the 
people of this country, and will be found much more advantageous 
to this kingdom than the woollen manufacture, which, being the 
staple trade of England, from whence all foreign markets are 
supplied, can never be encouraged here for that purpose : whereas, 
the linen and hempen manufactures will not only be encouraged 
as consistent with the trade of England, but will render the trade 
of this kingdom both useful and necessary to England." 

* In this connection it is worth comparing the spinelessness of the Anglo-Irish 
in 1698 with the spinefulness of their cousins in America, three quarters of a 
century later. 



THE SUPPRESSION OF IRISH TRADE 489 

Now to see how the promises of William and his Lords Jus- 
tice were kept. First, the Irish linen manufacture. 

In 1705 it was enacted that only the coarsest kinds of undyed 
Irish linen should be admitted to the British Colonies. Checked, 
striped and dyed Irish linens were excluded. Besides, no Colonial 
goods could be brought in return. And Irish linens of every kind 
were forbidden to be exported to all other countries with the ex- 
ception of Britain. There a thirty per cent duty met it with a 
laugh, and turned it home again. And, to the British linen manu- 
facturers a bounty was granted on all linen exports ! 

But English attention followed and sought out the Irish linen 
trade even within the four seas of Ireland. When Crommelin, 
the Huguenot, who had helped to build up the linen trade in Ulster, 
tried to bring the manufacture into Leinster, the fiercest English 
opposition blazed up. 

Edmund Burke excoriated the English Government for its gross 
breach of faith. And the poor, servile, Anglo-Irish Parliament in 
1774, addressing the Lord Lieutenant Harwood on the subject 
of the linen ruin, said, "The result is the ruin of Ulster and the 
flight of the Protestant population to America." So, it was the 
ruin of the linen trade by England who "protected them in the 
enjoyment of all they have" which helped to give to America her 
so-called Scotch-Irish population. 

Next, the promised help to the hempen manufacture. Al- 
though no Act came to their aid, the Irish went ahead with the 
hemp as well as with the linen, and soon developed a considerable 
trade in the export of sail-cloth to Britain. Then came the long 
promised aid. By 23 Geo. II, c. 33, there was a heavy import duty 
placed upon sail-cloth shipped to Britain. And to pursue the beast 
to its lair, very soon after British manufacturers were granted a 
bounty on sail-cloth exported from Britain to Ireland! 

The British had given to the Irish the linen and hempen manu- 
factures to play with, while they were carrying oft their woollen 
trade. And when the woollen was safely got away from them, 
they were politely requested to hand over the linen and hempen 
manufactures also. 

Ireland tried its hand at manufacturing cotton. England met 
this move with a twenty-five per cent duty upon Irish cotton im- 
ported into England. And next (in the reign of Geo. I) forbade 
the inhabitants of Great Britain to wear any cotton other than of 
British manufacture. So the cotton comedy was ended before it 
was well begun. 

From an early period, as before mentioned, the Irish ha3 a 



490 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

large trade in the export of cattle to England. This was soon 
prohibited. But when England felt need for Irish cattle, they 
were admitted once more. In 1665 Irish cattle were no longer 
welcome, and an Act of Parliament in that year put a heavy im- 
port duty on black cattle and sheep. 

The resourceful Irish then began killing their cattle and ex- 
porting the dead meat to England. Their equally resourceful pro- 
tectors countered with a law (18 Chas. II, c. 2) declaring that 
the importation of cattle, sheep, swine and beef from Ireland was 
henceforth a common nuisance, and forbidden. And to leave no 
little hole without a peg — they added pork and bacon for good 
measure. 

But the contrary Irish ferreted out a hole to get through. 
They dev^eloped dairying, and began exporting butter and cheese 
from Ireland. Their exasperated protectors had to go to the 
trouble of amending the prohibition laws — adding butter and 
cheese to the items which the Irish were invited to keep at home. 

When both their live cattle, their dead cattle and all the prod- 
ucts of cattle were shut out from Britain the Irish again fell back 
upon curing the killed meat, and exporting it to the Continent. 
They soon developed a highly profitable trade in this line. "And," 
says Newenham, "Ireland became the principal country from which 
butchers' meat was exported." At the Instigation of the English 
contractors, then, the English Parliament began laying embargo on 
the exportation of Irish provisions, on pretence of preventing the 
enemies of Britain from being supplied therewith ! And the trade 
in salted provisions was no more.'' 

In the middle of the eighteenth century Ireland, developing an 
important silk weaving Industry, began to disturb the dreams of 
English silk weavers. So Britain, which Imposed a heavy duty on 
Irish silk imported into England, politely requested the Irish Par- 
liament to admit British manufactured silk into Ireland free ! What 
is more, the despicable Anglo-Irish Parliament complied. Within 
the next generation the number of silk looms at work in Ireland 
was reduced from eight hundred to twenty. "And," says Newen- 

^ The Irish next killed their cattle and horses for their hides, and hegan what 
soon proved to be a prosperous trade in leather — which was in demand not only in 
England, but on the Continent of Europe. And their vigilant English masters soon 
came along with another prohibition bill, which put an end to that business. Be- 
fore quitting the cattle drive, however, it is only fair to say that one of England's 
most representative commercial writers of the early eighteenth century, Davenant, 
pleaded that England should permit Ireland to resume the cattle trade — because it 
would hold the Irish from manufactures 1 



THE SUPPRESSION OF IRISH TRADE 49T 

ham, "three thousand persons were thereby driven to beggary or 
emigration." 

Ireland attempted to develop her tobacco industry. But a law 
against its growth was passed in the first year of the reign of 
Charles the Second. And again, in 1831, under William the 
Fourth, it was enacted that any person found in possession of Irish- 
grown tobacco should suffer a heavy penalty. The tobacco trade 
was tenderly shown out. 

In the latter part of the eighteenth century Ireland began not 
only making her own glass, but also making glass for export: and 
Irish glass was gaining a name. Then by 4 Geo. II, c. 15, the Irish 
were forbidden to export glass to any country whatsoever under 
penalty of forfeiting ship, cargo> and ten shillings per pound weight 
of cargo. And it was forbidden to import any glass other than 
that of English manufacture. 

Four and five centuries ago and upward, the Irish fisheries 
were the second in importance in Europe. Under careful English 
nursing they were, a century and a half ago, brought to the van- 
ishing point. Then the independent Irish Parliament at the end 
of the eighteenth century saved them. It subsidised and revived 
the Irish fisheries — till they were rivalling the British. A few 
years after the Union, In 18 19, England withdrew the subsidy 
from the Irish fisheries — at the same time confirming and aug- 
menting the subsidies and grants to the British fishermen — with 
the result that, notwithstanding Ireland's possession of the long- 
est coastline of almost any European country, it is now possessed 
of the most miserable fisheries. Where 150,000 Irish fishermen 
In 27,000 Irish boats worked and thrived at the time that the 
English Parliament took away the subsidy In 18 19, only 20,000 
Irish people get a wretched support from Irish fisheries to-day. 
The British fisheries, four centuries ago, about equalled the Irish. 
The fisheries of Britain to-day are valued at £9,000,000 annually. 
The fisheries of Ireland are worth £300,000. The Irish fish 
were, with typical British solicitude, protected into the British net. 

Here have been set down only the principal Acts and devices 
for the suppression of Irish manufactures and Irish industries, 
but yet sufficient to show how England protected her beloved Irish 
subjects in the enjoyment of all they have — how Ireland pros- 
pered under English Rule in a material way — and how England, 
in her own step-motherly way, took each toddling Irish industry 
by the hand, led Its childish footsteps to the brink of the bottom- 
less pit, and gave it a push — thus ending its troubles forever. 



492 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

And thus is explained in part wliy Ireland, one of the most 
favoured by nature, and one of the most fertile countries in Eu- 
rope,® is yet one of the poorest. And why it is that, as recent 
statistics show, ninety-eight per cent of the export trade of the 
three kingdoms is in the hands of Britain and in Ireland's hands 
two per cent. 

Even the bitter anti-Irish Froude, in his English in Ireland, 
is constrained to confess, "England governed Ireland for what 
she deemed her own interest, making her calculations on the gross 
balance of her trade ledgers, and leaving her moral obligations 
aside, as if right and wrong had been blotted out of the statute 
book of the Universe." 

Says Lecky, "It would be difficult in the whole range of his- 
tory, to find another instance in which various and powerful agen- 
cies agreed to degrade the character, and blast the prosperity of 
a nation." 

And here endeth what may be considered by those who know 
not England's way with Ireland an amazing chapter — but quite 
commonplace to those who have a bowing acquaintance with Irish 
history. 

•^ Hear the testimony, two-edged, of Carew (sixteenth century): "Would you 
had seen the countries we have seen in this our journey, and then you would say 
you had not seen the like, and think it were much pity the same were not in sub- 
jection." 

And again: "I never, nor no other man that ever I have communed with, but 
saith that for all things it is the goodliest land that they have seen, not only for 
pleasure and pastime of a prince, but as well for profit to his Grace and to the 
whole realm of England." The final clause is the kernel of the matter. 



CHAPTER LVI 

THE VOLUNTEERS 

On Lammas Eve of the year 1778, a certain harassed English 
official sat him down in his room in Dublin Castle to pen a letter 
to one Mr. Stewart Banks, the Sovereign of Belfast.^ The letter 
cannot have been a very pleasant one to write, for it confessed 
the utter bankruptcy of the system of government under which 
England had held Ireland since the advent of "civil and religious 
liberty," with the victory of William III. Such as it is, however, 
it is an historic document — 

"Dublin Castle, August 14th, 1778. 
"Sir: 

"My Lord Lieutenant having received inform'ation that there is 
reason to apprehend that three or four privateers in company may in 
a few days make an attempt on the northern coast of this kingdom, 
by his Excellency's command I give you the earliest account thereof, 
in order that there may be a careful watch, and immediate intelligence 
given to the inhabitants of Belfast, in case any party from such ships 
should attempt to land. The greatest part of the troops being en- 
camped near Clonmel and Kinsale, his Excellency can at present send 
no further military aid to Belfast than a troop or two of horse, or 
part of a cornpany of invalids, and his Excellency desires you will ac- 
quaint me by express, whether a troop or two of horse can be properly 
accommodated in Belfast, so long as it may be proper to continue them 
in that town. Richard Heron." 

The shrewd Belfast man, who received this letter from Chief 
Secretary, Sir Richard Heron, was well able to read between the 
hnes and interpret the panic confession of impatience it contained. 
He knew — none better — that all over the world the power of 
England was at a very low ebb. In America her affairs were 
desperate. The surrender of General Burgoyne at Saratoga in 
the previous autumn (1777) had been followed in Spring by the 
formal adhesion of France to the American cause. 

An invasion of England or Ireland by the allies was on the 

^This office in the smaller town corresponded to that of Mayor in the lareer 

493 ^ 5 • 



494 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

cards — and how easy It would have been, Mr. Stewart Banks and 
his fellow townsmen had special reason for knowing; for in April, 
1778, John Paul Jones in his saucy "Ranger," after a foray marked 
by the capture of Dublin and Wexford merchantmen, the plunder 
of Kircudbright, the burning of shipping at Whitehaven, had sailed 
boldly into Belfast Bay, in broad daylight, and sunk a British man- 
of-war in sight of them alll Here he was back again, it seems, 
with new companions "three or four privateers in company" — 
and all the pauper Irish Government (which had been refused a 
paltry loan of a few thousand pounds a month or two by its own 
official bankers) was able to send to oppose him was "a troop or 
two of horse, or part of a company of invalids." 

Thus, moneyless, soldierless, amid the ruins of the Industries 
it had deliberately set itself to wreck, amid the starving remnants 
of a people it had deliberately set itself to exterminate, the English 
power in Ireland stood, a shivering and impotent thing, after a 
century during which it had full scope to work its will, and to apply 
unopposed its own chosen methods ! 

What ivrittcn answer the Sovereign of Belfast sent. In the name 
of his town, to the Chief Secretary's amazing document we do not 
know. But the real answer of Belfast is a matter of history. 

It was the Institution of the first corps of volunteers. "England 
sowed her laws in dragon's teeth, and they had sprung up in armed 
men!" 

The example of Belfast was speedily followed over the country, 
and within two years the Volunteers numbered 100,000 armed and 
disciplined men, officered by the greatest personages In Ireland : 
Lord Charlemont, the Duke of Leinster, the Earl of Clanricarde, 
Flood, Grattan, Ponsonby, and the elite of the landed aristocracy, 
the professions, high finance and politics. Though Catholics were 
not admitted to their ranks at first, they supported the movement 
from the beginning, and to this circumstance the Volunteers them- 
selves are indebted for the achievement which the after-world recog- 
nises as the only lasting one to their credit — their paternity of the 
"United Irishmen." 

Government on the other hand looked askance on the Volun- 
teers. But the position being described, it had no power to oppose 
them openly — and was finally constrained to help to equip them by 
turning over to them 16,000 stand of arms Intended for the 
Militia. 

The threat of invasion, though apparently Increased when 
Spain joined America and France In 1779, did not materialise. But 
as the lessons of the American War were pondered by citizen 



THE VOLUNTEERS 495 

soldiers on their way to the reviews, which soon became a promi- 
nent feature in Irish colonial life, or discussed at the banquets which 
re-united them in good fellowship afterwards, the determination 
m.aterialised in the movement to secure redress for the intolerable 
evils under which the British Colonists in Ireland, in common with 
the native Irish, were suffering. Of these evils none was more 
keenly felt than the trade restrictions, which with their disastrous 
consequences, have been discussed in a previous chapter. The 
ruin of the centuries old Irish woollen trade, completed by the 
third William, was followed, under the third George, by the 
destruction of the linen and provision trade, which had, to some 
extent, taken its place. The cries of the starving unemployed filled 
the land. In Dublin alone, twenty thousand artisans were out of 
work, and they and their families were only kept from dying of 
hunger by the exertions of charitable institutions. In Cork things 
were equally desperate. Ulster was quiet for the moment — ^but it 
was the quiet of exhaustion. Her fair countrysides had been 
drained of their population by landlord oppressions, and the ruin 
of the Hnen industry — and the flower of her manhood in Wash- 
ington's armies was avenging her quenched hearths and wrecked 
homes. 

The Volunteers therefore needed no special perspicacity to see 
that the most formidable enemy even of the English Colony in 
Ireland was the English trade interests, to which their advantages 
were ruthlessly sacrificed. 

The first invasion they set themselves to repel was that of 
English manufactured goods. 

Starting in Galway a "non-importation" movement spread itself 
rapidly through the country. Meetings organised by the Volun- 
teers, and supported by the press and scientific societies, as well as 
the most influential people in the colony, high sheriffs, grand jury- 
men, county magnates, and — more important still — the women of 
fashion, adopted resolutions pledging themselves to boycott English 
manufacture, and to "wear and make use of the manufactures of 
this country only." Shopkeepers and merchants who imported 
foreign goods, or tried to impose them on their customers as Irish 
manufacture, were warned of the consequences. The Volunteers 
were there to see that the boycott was duly observed. 

When Parliament met in October, 1779, Grattan moved his 
celebrated amendment to the Address to the Throne, demanding 
Free Trade for Ireland — that is the right to import and export 
what commodities she pleased, unrestrained by foreign legislation. 
His speech was doubtless very eloquent, as were those of Hussey, 



496 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Burgh and Flood, who supported him. But It is safe to say that 
the solid ranks of the placemen and "tied" borough members, who 
made up the Government's permanent majority in the Irish House 
of Commons, would have been as little moved by them, were it not 
that, outside in College Green, bold Napper Tandy had his artil- 
lery corps mustered, all in their gallant uniforms of emerald and 
scarlet, his cannon trained on the Parliament Houses and placarded 
with the inscription "Free Trade or ." 

To the pregnant argument of that unwritten alternative, the 
prudent placemen yielded. The amended address was carried by 
a huge majority, and next day it was borne to the Castle, along 
streets lined by Volunteers in full war kit, and thence dispatched 
to England marked "urgent." 

And as "urgent" the English Prime Minister and the British 
Legislature treated it. Acts were rushed through the English 
Houses of Parliament in a few weeks which restored to the Irish 
the trade rights of which they had been robbed. The embargo 
was taken off their export of woollens and glass; the colonial trade 
was thrown open to them; trade between Ireland and the British 
settlements in America and Africa was placed on an equal footing 
with that between Great Britain and these settlements. Those 
Acts were repealed which prohibited the carrying into Ireland of 
gold and silver. "The Irish were allowed to import foreign 
hops, and to receive a drawback on the duty on British hops. They 
were allowed to become members of the Turkey Company, and 
to carry on a direct trade between Ireland and the Levant Sea." 

But the British Parliament from which Free Trade had thus 
been wrung by the Volunteers — and the vivid fear of Ireland fol- 
lowing the example of America — still held the Irish Parliament in 
bondage. At any moment England might revoke the concessions 
she had granted under duress. There still remained on the Statute 
Books of the two countries the Acts which gave her this power — 
Poyning's Act, and the Sixth of George I. 

Poyning's Act was a piece of suicidal legislation imposed on 
the Parliament of the Pale in 1495, by Lord Deputy Sir Edward 
Poyning, who was sent over to supersede the Earl of Kildare after 
the latter had failed in two attempts to set up a rival kingdom In 
Ireland. It bound the Irish Parliament to legislate only as the 
British Parliament permitted It. The other provided that all the 
"causes and considerations" for calling a Parliament in Ireland, 
and all the Bills which were to be brought In during Its Session, 
must be previously certified to the King by the Chief Governor 
and Council of Ireland, and affirmed by the King and his Council 



THE VOLUNTEERS 497 

under the Great Seal of England, and that any proceedings of an 
Irish Parliament which had not been so certified and affirmed 
before that Parliament was assembled should be null and void. 

The "Sixth of George I" called also "the Declaratory Act," 
was passed in the English Houses of Parliament in 17 19, and "de- 
clared that the King, with the advice of the Lords and Commons 
of England hath had of right, and ought to have, full power and 
authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity 
to bind the people and the Kingdom of Ireland." It further took 
away from the Irish House of Lords its power of appellate juris- 
diction. 

In April, 1780, Grattan moved in the Irish House of Commons 
his "Declaration of Right." There were three resolutions con- 
tained in it, and on these was ultimately built the very shaky "Inde- 
pendence" with which his name is associated. They were: — 

(1) That His Most Excellent Majesty by and with the consent of 
the Lords and Commons of Ireland is the only power com- 
petent to enact laws to bind Ireland. 

(2) That the Crown of Ireland is, and ought to be, inseparably 
annexed to the Crown of Great Britain. 

(3) That Great Britain and Ireland are inseparably united under 
one Sovereign, by the common and indissoluble ties of inter- 
est, loyalty and freedom. 

Though the stage had been carefully prepared, though the 
Volunteers were again mustered in the streets of Dublin, though the 
ladies thronged the galleries in their most bewitching gowns, and 
the orators of the Opposition had prepared their most eloquent 
speeches — it was all in vain. "Mr. Flood, who well knew that 
the ministerial members were committed to negative the motion if 
it came to a division, recommended that no question be put, and 
no appearance of the business entered in the journals, to which 
Mr. Grattan consented." It was a distinct set-back, not alone for 
Grattan, and for those politicians who thought with him, but for 
the Volunteers. Fortunately the latter saw the lesson to be learned 
from it, so they began not only improving and consolidating their 
organisation, but giving it a national extension by including the 
Catholics. Finally, feeling themselves able to speak at last for the 
whole Irish nation, they determined to make their voice heard 
above that of the corrupt Parliament. The expedient they adopted 
for this end was that of provincial conventions. The most famous 
of them was the Convention of the Ulster Volunteers, held in 
Dungannon on the 15th of February, 1782. 



498 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

It was, however, when all is said and done, the progress of 
events in America which ultimately won a hearing for Grattan, 
when, in April, 1782, he moved an address to the King, asserting 
the principles already embodied in his "Declaration of Right." 
On the 19th of October, 178 1, Cornwallis surrendered at York- 
town, and not only the cause of American Independence, but that 
which Grattan called Irish "Independence" was won that day. 

The Duke of Portland wrote: — "If you delay, or refuse to 
be liberal. Government cannot exist here in its present form, and 
the sooner you recall your Lieutenant and renounce all claim to 
this country, the better. But, on the contrary, if you can bring 
your minds to concede largely and handsomely, I am persuaded that 
you may make any use of this people, and of everything they are 
worth, that you can wish." 

Lord Rockingham and his friends took the hint. They brought 
their minds to concede "largely and liberally" — that is to say all 
that was asked. A Bill repealing the Sixth of George I was intro- 
duced at once in the English Parliament and carried rapidly, and 
when the Irish Parliament met in May 27th, 1782, the Lord Lieu- 
tenant was instructed to announce to it that the King was prepared 
to give his unconditional assent "to Acts to prevent the suppressing 
of Bills In the Privy Council of this Kingdom, and the alteration 
of them anywhere, and to limit the duration of the Mutiny Act 
to two years." 

The following year, 1783, under pressure from the Volunteers 
and Flood a "Renunciation Bill" was carried through the British 
Parliament. It declared that the "right claim by the people of 
Ireland to be bound only by laws enacted by His Majesty and the 
Parliament of that Kingdom in all cases whatever, and to have all 
actions and suits at law, or In equity, which may be instituted in 
the Kingdom, decided by His Majesty's courts therein finally, and 
without appeal from thence, shall be and is hereby declared to 
be established and ascertained for ever, and shall at no time here^ 
after he questioned or questionable." 

How England kept that promise we shall see. 

MacNevin: History of the Volunteers of 1782. 
Lecky: Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland. 

" History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century. 

Davis: The Patriot Parliament. 
Grattan's and Flood's Memoirs. 
Sir Jonah Barrington : Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation, 



CHAPTER LVII 

THEOBALD WOLFE TONE 

"I HAVE now seen the Parliament of Ireland, the Parliament of 
England, the Congress of the United States of America, the Corps 
Legislatif of France and the Convention Batave; I have likewise 
seen our shabby Volunteer Convention in 1783, and the General 
Committee of the Catholics in 1793; so that I have seen, in the 
way of deliberative bodies as many I believe as most men; and of 
all those I have mentioned, beyond all comparison the most shame- 
fully profligate and abandoned of all sense of virtue, principle, or 
even common decency, was the legislature of my own unfortunate 
country. The scoundrels! I lose my temper every time I think 
of them!" 

The keen-faced young man in uniform of an Adjutant General 
of the French Army, whom we discover writing these angry w'-^S"^ 
in his Journal on returning to his auberge from visiting to"^^"' 
Batavian Convention at the Hague in April, 1797, has every claim 
to have his opinion of the "Independent" Irish Parliament accepted 
as the ultimate verdict of the Irish people on that body. For he 
was the first to lay his fingers on what was really wrong with it — 
and to show the Irish people the way to remedy it. 

This man was registered at his Dutch inn as "J. Smith, Adjutant- 
General of the Army of the Sambre and the Meuse." His true 
name, written in letters of undying light across the most memorable 
page of Irish History, was Theobald Wolfe Tone. 

The earlier days, when, though "the untameable desire — to 
become a soldier," which was the dominant passion of his boyhood 
and young manhood, yet politics seemed the one career open to 
him. Young Counsellor Tone used to spend much of his free 
time (which a slender law practice left him in abundance) in the 
galleries of the Irish House of Commons. There he speedily made 
the "Great Discovery," which was to influence not only the whole 
course of his own life, but the future direction of Irish History. 
Let us hear him state that discovery in his own words : — 

"That the influence of England was the radical vice of our Gov- 
ernment, and that Ireland would never be either free, prosperous, 

499 



500 THE STORY OF THE IRISH l^ACE 

or happy, until she was independent, and that independence was 
unattainable whilst the connection with England existed." 

Other people had felt long before this that the so-called "In- 
dependence" which Ireland had won from England in 1782, was 
not the genuine article, and that the "Independent" Irish Parlia- 
ment was a libel on the name of free institutions. But until Tone 
presented a true diagnosis, these others, like unskilled physicians, 
went on applying remedies to the symptoms, and neglecting the 
root cause of the malady which laid waste the Irish Nation in 
sight of all men's eyes. And that root cause was the connection 
with England. The defect of the Constitution of 1782 was inherent 
in the clause that "united Great Britain and Ireland under one 
Sovereign," and "annexed the crown of Ireland inseparably to the 
crown of Great Britain." 

It is perhaps not to be wondered at that those who had delib- 
erately chosen this constitution were unable to perceive that it was 
wrong and unworkable from the start, and that its evils were 
inherent in its very essence. But it was hardly in action when they 
began to see that there was something the matter with it, and to 
look round for a remedy. They imagined if the machinery were 
'"IP' ■)ved it would function satisfactorily, 
of Bilhe tp^yQ defects that struck everybody were: — 
of v^pirst, that more than three-fourths of the Irish Nation were 
totally unrepresented in this "Irish" Parliament; for the Catholics, 
who made up more than three millions of the four, which then con- 
stituted the population of Ireland, could neither sit in it, nor vote 
for a member of it. 

Second, that even as the Instrument of the Protestant minority 
of the nation, it was hopelessly corrupt and unrepresentative. Of 
its 300 members, only 64 were returned by counties. The remain- 
ing 236 represented "rotten boroughs" (where there were some- 
times as many as six voters, sometimes only one) ^ and these 
boroughs were the property of certain peers and weathy commoners 
who trafficked in them most shamelessly. "The price of a seat in 
Parliament," said the Belfast Reformers in one of their petitions, 
"is as well ascertained as that of the cattle in the fields." ^ Of the 

1 Lecky jjives an idea of the tariff: "Borough seats were commonly sold for 
£2,000 a parliament ; and the permanent patronage of a borough for from £8.000 
to £10,000. In his examination before the Select Committee of the House of Com- 
mons (August. 1798) Arthur O'Connor quoted as the common talk of the House 
when he himself was a menih^r : 'How much has such a one given for his seat? 
From whom did he purchase? Has not such a one sold his borough? Has not 
such a peer so many members in this house? Was not such a member with the 
Lord Lieutenant's Secretary to insist on some greater place or pension?'" 



THEOBALD WOLFE TONE 501 

total number of members more than a third were "placemen and 
pensioners" in the direct pay of the English Government. 

The true effect of the so-called "grant of Independence" of 
1782 has been admirably summed up by Arthur O'Connor. "What 
was called the emancipation of the Irish Legislature in 1782 was 
nothing more than freeing a set of self-constituted individuals 
from the absolute control of the British legislature, that they might 
be at liberty to sell themselves to the corrupt control of the British 
Ministry." 

At first Grattan (who, though a brilliant orator and phrase- 
maker, was no statesman) was so delighted with his new toy, that 
he could not bear to have it touched or criticised. He accordingly 
set himself strenuously against the continuance of the Volunteers, 
who under the leadership of Flood, were pressing for the reform 
of the Parliament. A great national Convention of the Volunteers 
summoned to Dublin for December, 1783, was split on the Catholic 
question, boycotted by Grattan, and so "nobbled" by his friend. 
Lord Charlemont, that it dispersed "re infecta"; and it seemed 
for a moment that the Volunteers, as an effective force in Irish 
public life, had absolutely disappeared. 

The truth was that they were eclipsed for a time, only to emerge 
from a temporary obscuring in the form of the United Irishmen. 

Up in his place in the gallery of the "House" in College Green, 
Theobald Wolfe Tone had at length got his own political theory 
clear. "To subvert the tyranny of our execrable government to 
break the connection with England, the never failing source of 
all our political evils, and to assert the independence of my country, 
these were my objects. To unite the whole people of Ireland, to 
abolish the memory of all past dissensions, and to substitute the 
common name of Irishman in place of the denominations of 
l^rotestant. Catholic, and Dissenter — these were my means." 

Absolute freedom from England and no absurd theory of 
"Sister Kingdoms united by the golden circle of the crown," of 
"colonial" independence — absolute union among Irishmen, and no 
cutting off of "Pales" or reserved territories — such was the solu- 
tion of the "Irish Problem" which presented itself to Theobald 
Wolfe Tone a hundred and thirty years ago. 

Our Theobald had his theory well defined, when on a memo- 
rable day he turned from the contemplation of the antics of the 

- Padraic Pearse considered the whole Gospel of Irish Nationality as contained 
in these words, which he paraphrases, "I believe in an Irish Nation and that free and 
indivisible." 



502 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

"placemen and pensioners" on the floor of the House, to answer 
an observation addressed to him by another occupant of the gallery. 
Agreeably attracted by the appearance of his interlocutor (whose 
name, he presently learned, was Captain Thomas Russell) he 
entered into a discussion with him, and before those two left the 
gallery, there was laid the foundations of a friendship which was 
destined to become one of the supreme motive forces of Irish 
history. 

Let us look at these two as they clasp hands for the first time — 
conscious that we are assisting at one of the great moments in our 
country's story. Is there need to describe Tone? Have we not 
felt him like a living presence in our midst all through these great, 
if sorrowful, days across which we are passing? A "rapid moving 
angular man with something of the eagle in nose and eyes, the face 
sallow and thin under the close-cropped upstanding hair." And 
Thomas Russell? Does he not live for us in the portrait painted 
of him by the hand of dear Mary MacCracken, the woman who 
loved him to the end, and who claimed as the sole reward of her 
years of unrequited dev^otion the privilege of building for him the 
tomb in holy Downpatrick, wherein his martyred body awaits the 
Resurrection : the tall black-haired young soldier, built and modelled 
like an Apollo, with the fire and pride of his dark eyes and pas- 
sionate mouth softened by the sweetness of his soul — with his voice 
as moving and melodious as that of Red Hugh himself? So we 
picture them standing together, and we keep the picture in our 
hearts for all time. 

Tone was so taken by his new friend that he lost no time in 
introducing him to "the little box of a house on the seaside at 
Irishtown," where Mrs. Tone and her baby girl were that summer, 
installed for the sea bathing. A charming society soon made that 
"little box of a house" its retidezvous. Tom Russell frequently 
brought his father and his brother, John. William Tone came for 
week-ends from his cotton factory at Prosperous, and as often 
as not was accompanied by his sister, Mary. They lived a 
delicious, picnicky kind of life, where everybody helped with the 
cooking and washing-up, and then spent the long care-free hours 
of the afternoon camped out on the seashore, in endless discussions. 

What did they talk of? Of everything under the sun — and then 
always they came back to the one great subject, Ireland, and how 
she too might take up her position in the march of liberated nations 
who, with France at their head, were advancing toward the supreme 
ideals which the French people in July, 1789, had postulated as 
the true basis of human society: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." 



THEOBALD WOLFE TONE 503 

For the French Revolution was in these days in its first generous 
and soul-stirring phase — in that pure dawn of which the poet has 
told us 

"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, 

But to be young was very heaven." 

And all those who gathered round Matilde Tone's board at Irish- 
town that summer were young — even seventy-year old Captain 
Russell. Here they were 

"They who had fed their childhood upon dreams." 

And behold ! their dreams had become true, and there had sprung 
forth 

"helpers to their heart's desire 
And stuff at hand plastic as they could wish." 

Tone has told us the enormous effect produced on the whole people 
of Ireland by the French. Revolution. "The French Revolution," 
he writes in his Autobiography, "became, in a little time the test of 
every man's political creed, and the nation was fairly divided into 
two great parties, the Aristocrats and the Democrats." 

The "Ascendancy Party" — the British-blooded ones, who, 
though only a small fraction of the population, held, "by right of 
conquest," five-sixths of the landed property of the country, and 
were in possession of all its place, power and patronage — hated the 
new manifestations of popular power, which threatened their old 
monopoly, and were, in their detestation of "French" principles, 
brought more close even than before to England (who was pres- 
ently to stand forth as the arch-enemy of these principles, and the 
champion of reactionary aristocracy all over Europe). The 
Catholics were divided. The bishops, like Dr. Troy, and aristo- 
crats like Lord Kenmare, as well as the country people of those 
parts of Ireland which had furnished, for generations, recruits for 
the "Irish Brigade in France," full of horror at the stories of 
Jacobin "atrocities" carefully disseminated, and full of loyalty and 
sympathy for the Ancien Regime, were bitterly opposed to the 
French Revolution. On the other hand, it was greeted with a warm 
welcome by the new class of educated, enlightened and progressive 
men among the Catholics : wealthy merchants and manufacturers 
hke John Keogh and John Sweetman of Dublin, or Luke Teeling 
of Lisburn, and young professional men, trained in foreign uni- 
versities, like Dr. MacNevin. These recognised that the doctrines 
of "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity" held in them the salvation 



504 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

of the enslaved, debased, and outcast Catholics of Ireland. The 
Dissenters of the North, republican both by tradition, and the 
genius of their religion, were to a man, enthusiastic ajdmirers of 
the French Revolution from the start. 

One of the truths presently discovered by the keen minds which 
canvassed these things, that summer of 1790 at Irishtown, was 
that England, through the instrumentality of the "Protestant As- 
cendancy," had kept her hold on Ireland by the deliberate fostering 
of religious differences. Ergo it followed that if Dissenters and 
Catholics could be persuaded to make common cause, the "Protes- 
tant Ascendancy" would not only suffer a rude shock, but the 
supremacy of its "owners and inventors," the English Government, 
would meet with an immediate downfall. The first task, therefore, 
of anyone who wanted to free Ireland was to unite Catholics and 
Dissenters. 

Their similarity of views on the French Revolution was a first 
step to this union — and we shall presently see how skilfully Tone 
and his friend, Tom Russell, manoeuvred from it. 

Other things we shall see, likewise : how England, and the 
servile Irish Parliament, which was the instrument moulded to her 
hand, set themselves with demoniac fury to break the union of 
Irishmen, making of it a crime punishable by tortures terrible 
and fearful death. 



CHAPTER LVIII 

THE UNITED IRISHMEN 

During the leisure of these days, Tone, who had a ready pen and 
an extraordinary gift of convincing exposition, dashed off a pamphlet 
addressed to the (Presbyterian) Dissenters, and entitled "An 
Argument in behalf of the Catholics of Ireland," in which he dem- 
onstrated that Dissenters and Catholics had "but one common 
interest and one common enemy: that the depression and slavery 
of Ireland was produced and perpetuated by the divisions existing 
between them, and that consequently, to assert the independence 
of their country and their own individual liberties, it was necessary 
to forget all former feuds to consolidate the whole strength of 
the entire nation, and to form for the future but one people." 

The pamphlet had an enormous and immediate success, and 
though it was signed "A Northern Whig," the identity of its author 
was no secret. Presently Counsellor Tone found himself quite a 
personage, and he was assiduously cultivated by the two sections of 
the people whom it was his object to unite. The leaders of the 
advanced party among the Catholics — John Keogh, Byrne, 
Braughall, Sweetman, etc., showed their appreciation of his efforts 
on their behalf, not only by inviting him to all their splendid social 
gatherings but, in a still more practical way, by appointing him 
(at a salary counted liberal in those days) to the post of Assistant 
Secretary to the Catholic Committee, left vacant by the departure 
of Richard Burke, son of the great Edmund. 

At the same time the Dissenters of the North were eager to 
do him honour — their eagerness to meet the author of the pamphlet 
being doubtlessly increased by the encomiums of his friend Captain 
Russell, who had, since the close of those pleasant days at Irish- 
town, been stationed at Belfast on regimental duty. The Volun- 
teers of the Northern capital, "of the first or green company" 
paid him the rare compliment of electing him an honorary member 
of their corps (a privilege never before extended to any one except 
Henry Flood) and they invited him to Belfast, in the words of the 
Autobiography, "to assist in forming the first club of United Irish- 
men." 

The idea of the United Irishmen as a political organisation 

505 



5o6 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

originated with Samuel Neilson (son of a Presbyterian minister), 
a prosperous woollen merchant in Belfast. Some months before 
Tone first set foot in the North, he had discussed the matter very 
fully with Henry Joy MacCracken and Thomas Russell, and won 
over to his views other enlightened Belfast merchants like the 
Simmses, MacCabe, Sinclair, MacTier, etc. Tone's services were 
sought, probably at the suggestion of Russell, to organise the 
Society, frame its declaration, elaborate its constitution, etc. 

The first general meeting of the United Irishmen was held on 
1 8th of October, 1791, and the following resolutions were proposed 
and carried: 

(i) That the weight of English influence in the Government 
of this country is so great as to require a cordial union among all 
the people of Ireland, to maintain that balance which is essential 
to the preservation of our liberties, and the extension of our 
commerce. 

(2) That the sole constitutional mode by which this influence 
can be opposed is by a complete and radical reform of the represen- 
tation of the people in Parliament. 

(3) That no reform is just which does not include Irishmen 
of every religious persuasion. 

There we have the original programme of the United Irish- 
men — no other than the reform programme of the Volunteers, 
strengthened by the frank and free adoption of the principles of 
religious equality, and united action, among all sections of the 
Irish people. 

Shortly after its establishment in Belfast, a branch of the Society 
was started by Tone in Dublin — his chief adjutant in the business 
being that sturdy veteran, Napper Tandy, whose cannon had played 
a great, if silent, part in the early successes of the Volunteers. 

The new Society went ahead by leaps and bounds, and the 
establishment in Belfast early in 1792 of the famous newspaper, 
The Northern Star, under the editorship of Samuel Neilson, did 
much to spread its principles. Neilson and his friends took the 
greatest possible interest in the Catholic Convention, which the 
Catholic Committee, and their energetic Assistant Secretary, Tone, 
were organising at the time; and the union between Dissenters and 
Catholics was demonstrated in a dramatic and startling way at 
the end of the Convention. The delegates chosen to go to London 
to bear to the King of England that assembly's demand for the 
complete emancipation of the Catholics chose (for reasons we 
can conjecture) to make the journey via Belfast, and their presence 
was made the occasion of a unique demonstration. "Upon their 



THE UNITED IRISHMEN 507 

departure the populace took their horses from their carriages and 
dragged them through the streets amid the hveHest shouts of joy 
and wishes for their success." 

England on the point of war with France found it prudent 
to make the Irish Parhament — whose poHcy she absolutely con- 
trolled — yield to the Catholic demands, at least in part, and the 
Franchise of 1793 was passed/ The concessions were not made 
without advertence to the fact that Catholics, having got portion 
of their demands, might be detached from the Dissenters, and the 
''Union" be broken up. 

To break up that "Union" — all the weight of England's power 
in Ireland was, henceforth, consistently directed. And now begins 
one of the most extraordinary struggles of which history has 
record. While Tone, Neilson and their friends were doing every- 
thing in their power to "found a brotherhood of affection, a com- 
munion of right, and a union of power among Irishmen of every 
religious persuasion, and thereby to obtain a complete reform of 
the legislature founded on the principles of civil, political, and 
religious liberty," - the Clares, Beresfords, Fosters, Duignans, etc., 
were "exhausting the resources of civilisation" to keep the Irish 
nation "a heap of un-cementing sand." The servile Parhament 
passed "Convention Acts" and Irishmen were deprived of the right 
of public meeting, and magistrates and policemen were given carte 
blanche to search houses by day or night, for arms. The "Black 
and Tans" of that period smashed up newspaper offices and news- 
paper plants, wrecked the houses and business premises of men 
suspected of "United" principles with thorough vigour and zest. 
The forces of bigotry were invoked in a series of Grand Jury 
resolutions, and finally, as a supreme effort, the Orange Order was 
established. And while all this was being done the men'who worked 
for the union of all Irishmen were persecuted in every possible 
way, their properties destroyed, and they themselves clapped into 
jail — as often as not a step to the foot of the gallows. Cried the 
poet, as he stood by the bloody bier of young William Orr: 

"Why cut off in palmy youth? 
Truth he spoke and acted truth. 
'Countr3'-men, unite,' he cried, 
And died for what our Saviour died." 

It became plain to the leaders of the "United Irishmen" that 



1 This gave Catholics the elective franchise, but not the right to sit in 
Parliament. 

- Extract from a Manifesto of the United Irishmen. 



5o8 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

if they wanted to effect their purpose they must do more than pass 
resolutions. Accordingly, the Society, which had been started as a 
purely "constitutional" organisation, after about four years of 
existence was remodelled on a new basis — a military one. Govern- 
ment had turned down their efforts to reform by peaceful methods, 
and now they were determined to fight for their rights. 

With the example of America before them, it is natural that 
they turned to France for aid. It so happened that France about 
the same time was thinking much of Ireland. One Jackson, an 
English clergyman, exiled to France on account of his Jacobin prin- 
ciples, was sent by the revolutionary authorities in Paris to England 
and Ireland on a secret mission. In London he communicated his 
plans to an old friend, an English attorney called Cockayne. 
Cockayne immediately put the information thus obtained in the 
possession of Pitt, who instructed him to accompany Jackson to 
Ireland and report all his proceedings. Through the instrumen- 
tality of Leonard McNally (then, and for long years afterwards, 
posing as a patriot barrister, but in reality a Castle spy), some of 
the United Irishmen, especially Tone, Hamilton Rowan, and Dr. 
Reynolds, were implicated with Jackson, and when the case against 
the latter was complete and he was put on trial for high treason, 
they had to fly the country. 

Before Tone left Dublin for America, he promised his friends, 
Thomas Russell and Thomas Addis Emmet (a prominent Dublin 
barrister) , that he would take the earliest opportunity of interesting 
the French minister to the United States in the cause of an alliance 
between France and Ireland, and, furnished if possible with a 
recommendation from that official, present himself in Paris to seek 
aid from the French Directory. On his way through Belfast he 
made a similar engagement with his Republican friends of that 
city. On a certain June day in 1795, Tone, in company with Russell, 
Neilson, MacCracken, Simms and some others, climbed to the top 
of MacArt's Fort on the top of Cave Hill — and there looking 
down on the quiet little city, they swore "never to desist from their 
efforts until they had subverted the authority of England over their 
country, and asserted their independence." 

A little more than half a year later, Wolfe Tone was in Paris, 
in direct touch with the French Directory, and received as the 
representative of the people of Ireland, on a mission for "the 
separation of Ireland from England, and her establishment as an 
independent Republic in alliance with France." By the following 
June, matters had so far advanced that the republicans in Ireland 
sent another mission to France, this time consisting of Lord Edward 



THE UNITED IRISHMEN 509 

Fitzgerald and Arthur O'Connor, and those negotiations were 
concluded which led to the great expedition under Hoche in the 
winter of 1796 — the "Bantry Bay" expedition, whose story we 
shall presently relate. 

During the year 1796, events had moved in Ireland with extraor- 
dinary rapidity. On the one hand the Government had let loose 
on the country a storm of organised terrorism, and on the other the 
country, as a measure of self-protection, if nothing else — had gone 
solidly into the ranks of the "United" men. 

It was mentioned that among the sinister measures adopted by 
Government to break the "Union," was the establishment of the 
Orange Society, Of this association, and its works, it becomes 
necessary now to speak. 

The Orange Society was established in the village of Lough- 
gall, Co. Armagh, on the 21st September, 1795, the evening of the 
"Battle of the Diamond." ^ Their "test" at that period is said to 
have been "In the awful presence of Almighty God, I, A. B., do 
solemnly swear that I will to the utmost of my power support the 
King and the present government and I do further swear that I 
will use my utmost exertions to exterminate all the Catholics of the 
Kingdom of Ireland." 

The extermination clause was afterwards repudiated, but, 
whether the original Orange oath contained it or not, the Orange- 
men themselves left no doubt that the raison d'etre of their existence 
was the extermination of the Catholics of their neighbourhood. 
"They would no longer permit a Catholic to exist in Co. Armagh." 
They forced masters to get rid of their Catholic servants and land- 
lords of their Catholic tenants. They posted up on the cabins of 
the unfortunate Catholic small farmers, and cottiers and weavers, 
ill-spelt notices threatening dreadful things If the inmates did not 
clear out at once "to Hell or Connacht." If the persons whose 
houses were thus "papered" as the phrase went, neglected the warn- 
ing, large bodies of armed Orangemen, mad with drink and re- 
ligious fanaticism, assembled at night, destroyed the furniture, 
broke down the looms, burned the habitations and forced the 
ruined families to fly elsewhere for shelter. Several Catholic 
chapels were burned, and the disturbances presently extended to 
Derry, Down, Antrim and Tyrone. It is estimated that in Co. 

3 The "Battle of the Diamond" was fought between the "Peep o' Day Boj's," 
fanatical Protestants of the lower order who used to raid Catholic houses for arms 
at the break of day, and the "Defenders," Catholics, who had banded themselves 
together to resist these outrages. It resulted in the defeat of the "Defenders" who 
left many of their number dead on the field. 



'510 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Armagh alone over 7,000 persons were thus left homeless — and 
turned out in the dead of winter to die by the wayside, or find 
shelter — God only knows where. Those who died were the hap- 
piest. As the others wandered from place to place seeking shelter, 
they were met by the magistrates and their armed followers — and 
clapped into jail as "vagrants." From the jails the pick of the 
young men were press-ganged for the English Fleet ! ^ 

What did the Irish Government do to protect the defenceless 
Catholics, and to punish their Orange aggressors? The atrocities, 
the murders, the extermination campaign against the Catholics, 
were all "according to plan," and those who carried them out 
were sure of Government protection. It happened, however, that 
some of the zealous "law and order" men were too zealous. Lord 
Carhampton, for instance, and other magistrates who had ("acting 
with a vigour beyond the law,") been conscripting hundreds of 
untried prisoners for the Fleet, had not the slightest sanction of 
legality for their proceedings. What did it matter? "Let us," 
said the Irish Parliament, "make their illegalities legal." x\nd 
accordingly, that Parliament proceeded to pass the "Insurrection" 
and "Indemnity" Acts. The Attorney General, in introducing the 
Bills, explained the former as designed for "preventing insurrec- 
tions, tumults and riots in this kingdom," ' and the latter for "indem- 
nifying magistrates, and others, who in their exertions for the 
preservation of the public tranquillity, might have acted against 
the forms and rules of law." But Grattan's famous commentary 
on them explained far more clearly their true inwardness. "A bill 
of indemnity went to secure the offending magistrates against the 
consequences of their outrages and illegalities; that is to say, in 
our humble opinion, the poor were stricken out of the protection 
of law, and the rich out of its penalties, and then another bill was 
passed to give such lawless proceedings against his Majesty's sub- 
jects continuation, namely, a bill to enable magistrates to perpetrate 
by law those offences which they had before committed against it; a 
bill to legalise outrage, to barbarise law, and to give the law itself 
the caste and colour of outrage. By such a bill the magistrates 
were enabled, without legal process, to send on board a tender, his 

* If the atrocities of the Orangemen had stopped at house-wrecking they would 
have been bad enough. But there were still worse crimes to their account — and 
some of these had been collected in a famous pamphlet, praised by Presbyterian 
Jamie Hope "as containing more truth than anything ever written of the events 
that led up to the Rising of '98." 

5 This Act gave magistrates the most unlimited powers to arrest and imprison 
and search houses for arms. 



THE UNITED IRISHMEN 511 

Majesty's subjects, and the country was divided into two classes — 
his Majesty's magistrates and his Majesty's subjects; the former 
without restraint, and the latter without privilege." 

Thus deprived of the protection of the laws, the people were 
more rapidly driven into the ranks of the "United Irishmen" ; 
and by the end of 1796 the organisation had a membership of half- 
a-million, and included men of all classes of the nation: Lord 
Edward Fitzgerald (son of the Duke of Leinster), Arthur 
O'Connor (nephew of Lord Longueville), Thomas Addis Emmet 
the successful barrister, Dr. MacNevin the clever physician, John 
Sweetman the wealthy brewer, and innumerable Catholic priests 
and Presbyterian clergymen joined the Society in the year. Pres- 
ently it was reckoned that 100,000 men were drilling secretly — 
ready to take the field when the French should land. 

In order to break up the organisation. Government, in 1796, 
arrested the best known of the leaders, Samuel Neilson, Thomas 
Russell, Henry Joy MacCracken, William MacCracken, etc., in 
Belfast; young Charles Teeling in Lisburn, and numerous others 
in Dublin. But for every man arrested, ten men sprang forward 
to fill his place, and when the message came that the French, with 
Tone on board "were on the sea," there was the proud feeling that 
the "United Irishmen" were ready to give a good account of 
themselves.^ 

« THE SHAN VAN VOCHT 
(A Street Ballad of '98) 

Oh! the French are on the sea, What should the yeomen do, 

Says the Shan Van Vocht ; But throw off the red and blue, 

The French are on the sea, And swear that they'll be true 

Says the Shan Van Vocht; To the Shan Van Vocht? 

Oh ! the French are in the Bay, 

They'll be here without delay. And what colour will they wear? 
And the Orange will decay Says the Shan Van Vocht; 

Says the Shan Van Vocht. What colour will they wear? 

Says the Shan Van Vocht; 
And where will they have their camp? What colour should be seen 

Says the Shan Van Vocht; Where our fathers* homes have been, 

Where will they have their camp? But our own immortal Green? 

Says the Shan Van Vocht; Says the Shan Van Vocht. 

On the Curragh of Kildare 

The boys they will be there _ And will Ireland then be free? 
With their pikes in good repair Says the Shan Van Voclit; 

Says the Shan Van Vocht. Will Ireland then be free? 

Says the Shan Van Vocht; 

Then what will the yeomen do? Yes! Ireland shall be free, 

Says the Shan Van Vocht; From the centre to the sea; 

What will the yeomen do? Then hurrah for Liberty! 

Says the Shan Van Vocht; Says the Shan Van Vocht. 



512 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

When the news of the arrest of his "dear friends, Russell and 
Samuel Neilson," reached Tone, he was on his way to Brest to 
join General Hoche and the great expedition then preparing for 
the invasion of Ireland. A fortnight later, he was giving messages 
for Oliver Bond, Richard MacCormack, etc., to MacSheehy, 
before the latter embarked in a "safe American" vessel to tell the 
republicans in Ireland what was forward at Brest. 

There is no more dramatic or moving narration in all history, 
than that set forth in Tone's "Journals" dealing with the Hoche 
expedition. Those vivid pages make us actually live through all 
the events they commemorate. We share his exasperation at the 
unaccountable delays, his exultation when he saw his cherished 
dreams at length realised, and on board the "Indomptable" he set 
sail for the land of his heart's desire. The expedition consisted 
of forty-three sail under Admiral Morand de Galles and Bouvet, 
Avith an army of fifteen thousand men under General Hoche, one 
of the greatest generals in Europe, and General Grouchy. It had 
on board abundance of stores and artillery, and arms for 45,000 
men. 

But treachery seems to have been at work from the start, and 
if Tone knew some of the things we know now, much that puzzled 
him might have been explained to him. Since French ministers and 
French generals were tempted by English gold and feli,^ can we 
assume that the virtue of French Admirals was altogether tempta- 
tion proof. A few very suspicious facts are to be recorded. The 
English fleet (though the English Government through its spies 
was quite as well informed of the incidents of the expedition as the 
promoters themselves) never once showed up to bar its passage. 
Was it because it was understood that there was no need? A mys- 
terious message, the source of which nev-er was traced (but the 
purport of which was obvious), reached the Irish leaders shortly 
after MacSheehy's arrival, stating that the expedition was post- 
poned. The French fleet had only been a day at sea when the 
frigate, the "Fraternite," having General Hoche on board, as well 
as Admiral Morand de Galles, got separated from its companions 
— and by some very curious fatality never reached the Irish coast 

"< Barthelemy, the French minister in Switzerland, with whom, in \ht summer of 
1796, Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Arthur O'Connor conducteid the negotiations 
which led to the expedition, was a paid agent of Pitt. Many of the French Generals 
like Pichegru were also in the pay of England. When Doctor MacNevin went to 
Hamburg as an envoy of the United Men all his proceedings were carefully retailed 
to the English Government and the Memoir he wTote for the French Directory 
passed straight into the hands of Pitt who submitted it to the Irish Executive. 



THE UNITED IRISHMEN 513 

at all — but rejoined its companions, safe and sound, when the 
remnants of the expedition returned to Brest in January.* At day- 
break on the 2 1 St December, Tone was looking once more with 
emotions one may not describe on the "fair hills of holy Ireland." 
At eight in the morning of the 22nd his ship was at the mouth of 
Bantry Bay. "I am now so near the shore," he writes later that 
day, "that I can see distinctly two old castles, yet I am utterly 
uncertain whether I shall ever set foot on it." The following day, 
so desperate was he, that he proposed to head a landing himself 
and asked General Cherin to give him "the Legion de France," a 
company of the artillerie legere and as many officers as desired to 
come as Volunteers in the expedition, with what arms and stores 
remained, and to land them in Sligo Bay. The proposal appealed 
to the gallantry of the French officers — and on Christmas eve 
Grouchy determined to land with the force he had. 

What a strange Christmas that must have been for Tone — so 
near the land "that he could in a manner touch the sides of Bantry 
Bay with his right and left hand," yet conscious how doubtful it 
was that he should ever tread again the sacred soil of Ireland. 
What thoughts were his, when, wakened by the wind at two o'clock 
on Christmas morning, he paced the galley in his great coat "de- 
voured by the most gloomy reflections." 

That night, at "half after six, in a heavy gale of wind," orders 
came to the "Indomptable" from Admiral Bouvet "to cut her 
cable and put to sea instantly." "Our first idea," writes Tone, 
"was that it might be an English frigate lurking in the bottom 
of the bay, which took advantage of the storm and darkness of 
the night to make her escape, and wished to separate our squadron 
by this stratagem; for it seemed incredible that an Admiral should 
cut and run in this manner without any previous signal of any kind 
to warn the fleet, and that the first notice we should have of its 
intention should be his hailing us in this extraordinary manner with 
such unexpected and peremptory orders." 

The brave Captain Bedout and officers on board the "In- 
domptable" refused at first to accept the orders as genuine, and on 
the 27th December, a council of war was held, at which a plan of 
Tone's for a landing at the mouth of the Shannon was carefully 

8 "I believe," writes Tone, "it is the first instance of an Admiral in a dean 
frigate, with moderate weather, and moonlight night, parting company with his 
fleet." But he does not seem to have allowed himself to entertain the suspicion we 
cannot avoid, viz., that General Hoche was the victim of a trick. Tone blamed him, 
however, for not embarking on the flagsliip with his staff. 



514 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

discussed. But a frightful storm that arose the same night made 
any further effort impossible and on the morning of the 29th the 
Commander made the signal to steer for France. 

The Bantry Bay expedition was ended. "England had not 
had such an escape since the Spanish Armada." 

Wolfe Tone's Autobiography. 

Barrington: Personal Sketches. 

MacNevin: Pieces of Irish History. 

Lecky: History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century. 



CHAPTER LIX 

THE RISING OF I798 

After the failure of the "Bantry Bay Expedition" there were 
many who thought the United Irishmen ought to take the field 
themselves without waiting for foreign aid — and during the course 
of 1797 this opinion gained ground, especially in the North. But 
the Dublin men, Thomas Addis Emmet, John Keogh. William 
Murphy, were opposed to it — and their views prevailed when it 
was learned that through the efforts of the indomitable Tone, a new 
expedition was being fitted out. This time it was the Dutch, who 
claimed for themselves the role of chief helper in the drama of Ire- 
land's deliverance. 

In the meantime Government was making a desperate attempt 
to break up the United Irishmen, or, failing that, to goad the 
people into a premature and unsupported rising. In March, Gen- 
eral Lake was sent to Ulster to disarm it. The Lord Lieutenant, 
Camden, in a letter of instructions, gave Lake to understand that he 
was not to be too squeamish about the means he used, "if the 
urgency of the case demanded a conduct beyond that which could 
be sanctioned by the law, the General was not to suffer the cause of 
justice to be frustrated by the delicacy which might possibly actuate 
the magistracy." 

The hint not to spare "frightfulness" was not lost on General 
Lake and the "Yeos," ^ and "Ancient Britons" and "Essex Fenci- 
bles" who formed his army. The burning of peaceful homes, the 
slaughter of old men, women and children, the torturing of pris- 
oners (picketing and half-hanging were familiar forms), the most 
shocking outrages on women, this was what General Lake and 
his heroes interpreted as comprehended in the "conduct beyond 
that sanctioned by the law," which Viceregal recommendations 
favoured. Lecky found in the Government archives a letter from 
one John Giffard, an officer In the Dublin militia, to Under-Secre- 

1 The "Yeos" were Orangemen and other British Colonists armed by Govern- 
ment. 

515 



5i6 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

tary Cooke, describing what happened in one of the raids for arms. 
As his damaging testimony cannot under the circumstances be 
doubted I select it in preference to other evidence — even that of 
Lord Moira in the EngHsh House of Lords — to show what was 
done during the disarming of Ulster in the summer of 1797. The 
scene is laid near Newry where the "Ancient Britons" had their 
Headquarters. Giffard tells how the "Britons burned a great 
number of houses, and the object of emulation between them and 
the Orange Yeomen seems to be who shall do most mischief." He 
describes an expedition to the mountains in search of arms. His 
party returned to the main body of the Aucient Britons, "to 
which," he says, "I was directed by the smol^e and flames of burn- 
ing houses, and by the dead bodies of boys and old men slain by 
the Britons, though no opposition whatever had been given them, 
and, as I shall answer to Almighty God, I believe a single gun was 
not fired, but by the Britons or Yeomanry. I declare there was 
nothing to fire at, old men, women, and children excepted. Six- 
teen prisoners were taken and marched to Newry where their cap- 
tors were asked why they made any prisoners at all, meaning that 
we should have finished them. . . . Two of the Britons desirous 
to enter a gentleman's house, the yard gate was opened to them by 
a lad, whom for his civility they shot and cut in pieces/' 

The perfect discipline of the "United Men" kept the people 
quiet, and this effect was the more readily obtained, as it was felt 
their time would come speedily. The Dutch were fitting out a great 
expedition at the Texel. 

It is a sad story, that of the new disappointment caused by the 
failure of the Dutch expedition to materialise. In May and June 
a great mutiny broke out in the English fleet, the Mutiny of the 
Nore. If the Dutch had been ready then — with the United Irish- 
men in the full perfection of their organisation to co-operate with 
them after a landing — the cause of Irish liberty would have been 
surely won. Unfortunately the chance was missed, and the defeat 
of the Dutch fleet by the English at Camperdown, on the nth 
October, put a definite end to the hopes connected with it. 

A few weeks previously a blow even heavier fell on the Irish 
cause — the death of General Hoche. 

The disappointments and the sufferings of the tragic year had a 
bad effect on many of the United Irishmen of the North, who, by 
this time, were convinced that the cause was doomed to failure, 
and that it was the part of wise men to save themselves, and 
what they could, from the impending catastrophe. Accordingly, 



THE RISING OF 1798 517 

we find some of them, to their eternal disgrace, selling themselves 
as spies and informers to the Government." The most noted of 
these traitors was one Samuel Turner, of Newry, who had fled to 
Hamburg in June, 1797. Here he was in touch with Madame 
Matthiessen, a cousin of Lady Edward Fitzgerald (Pamela), 
through whom the communications of the United Irishmen with 
the French minister at Hamburg, Reinhardt, were conducted. As a 
consequence all the plans of the republicans in Ireland and the 
efforts of their envoys Levins and MacNevin at Hamburg, were 
at once communicated to the English Government. In Ireland, too, 
the "battalion of testimony" was numerous and unsuspected. There 
was the unspeakable Leonard MacNally, who acted in public the 
part of a patriot barrister, shared with Curran the task of defending 
the United Irishmen at the trials — and put the knowledge he thus 
gained at the service of the Government, whose secret pensioner 
he had been for years. There was MacGuckin, the legal adviser of 
the Northern leaders, who acted the same part towards his un- 
fortunate chents. There was Reynolds, a sworn "United man," 
the friend of Lord Edward, there was Magan, the immaculate 
Catholic barrister — the horrible list is too long to finish! 

In consequence of information thus received the English Gov- 
ernment, early In 1798, arrested Arthur O'Connor and Father 
Quigley, on their way to France to make a new effort to secure 
French aid. O'Connor they kept in prison or internment until 
1 801, but Fr. Quigley they hanged. On the 12th March 1798, 
acting on information supplied by Reynolds, the Irish Government 
swooped upon a meeting of the Leinster Directory at the house of 

~ As it has been a fashion with English and pro-English people falsely to taunt 
the Irish that informers could always be procured in any of their movements, it is 
worth while adducing a bit of valuable testimony to the contrast between Irish 
staunchness and British, in the "United" movement. Gamble, an eminently just- 
minded man, and an able writer, of British stock, residing in Strabane in the early 
part of the eighteenth century, knowing intimately both his own stoclc and the Irish, 
and evidently well versed in the local United Irish chronicles, gives in his "Tour in 
Ireland" (published in 1825) striking testimony on the matter. On page 271 of 
his book he says : "On these occasions the Protestant was almost always the in- 
former. The fidelity of the Catholic could rarely be shaken." And on page 272: 
"The Government therefore was probably benefited, rather than injured by the 
share tlie Protestant had in the rebellion — hanging, as he often did, a dead-weight 
about the neck of his Catholic associate, restraining his efforts and discovering his 
plans. * * * Events of that day (at least as far as present generations are 
concerned) have placed an everlasting bar between the two — the one has no wish to 
be trusted ; but if he had, no inducement, I daresay, would prevail on the other to 
trust him." However, the latest Irish movement, in which more than a hundred 
thousand people have conspired, struggled, fought, without a single individual being 
purchasable by all the gold of England, is the most striking proof of Irish fidelity. — 
S. M. M. 



5i8 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Oliver Bond, arrested all those present, and seized their papers, 
which put them in possession of all their plans. The same day the 
authorities arrested Thomas Addis Emmet, John Sweetman, Dr. 
Nevin, Oliver Bond, and issued warrants against Lord Edward 
Fitzgerald, Richard MacCormack and Sampson — who immediately 
went "on the "run." The two latter escaped to the continent, but 
nothing would induce Lord Edward to leave Ireland, though strong 
hints were given to his family (by Lord Clare himself) that the 
ports were open to him. He knew that the country would rise 
now, and he was determined that the Commander-in-Chief should 
not be proclaimed a deserter. 

The vacant places in the Directory were filled by Henry and 
John Sheares, two successful barristers, and Lord Edward, assisted 
by his sturdy lieutenant, Sam Neilson, was very active in superin- 
tending operations. A new promise came from the French that 
they would send an expeditionary force in May. 

On the 30th March, Martial Law was proclaimed all through 
the country. The most frightful atrocities were committed by the 
troops under its shelter, for the purpose avowed by Lord Castle- 
reagh himself "to cause a premature rebellion." To the "fright- 
fulness" associated with General Lake's conduct in Ulster in 1797, 
new terrors were added by the policy of "free quarters." A savage 
and undisciplined soldiery, mad with lust and drink, were let 
loose in the pure homes of the countryside, and the land was filled 
with the cries of ravished women, the shrieks of the victims of 
pitch cap and triangle, the lamentations of those who saw their 
homes go up in flames. So dreadful was the conduct of the troops, 
that their Commander-in-Chief, Sir Ralph Abercrombie, unable to 
stomach them any longer, resigned. He had previously declared 
the "army was in a state of licentiousness, which must render it 
formidable to everyone but the enemy." "Within these twelve 
months," he writes, on another occasion, "every crime, every cruelty 
that could be committed by Cossacks and Calmucks has been trans- 
acted here." 

Whether the French came or not the people could hold out 
no longer. The insurrection was fixed for the 23rd May, and the 
signal was to be the stopping of the mail coaches from Dublin. 

Four days before the appointed date Lord Edward was taken 
at Murphy's house in Thomas Street, on information supplied by 
Magan; and the following day, while he lay in Newgate prison, 
wounded to death, the two Sheares were betrayed by Captain 
Armstrong. 

On the day of Lord Edward's death. Napoleon definitely 



THE RISING OF 1798 



519 



abandoned the Irish cause, and set out on his Egyptian campaign.^ 
The insurrection, long delayed in the hope of the promised 
aid from France, now broke out under the worst possible condi- 
tions for success. Left without leaders, is it astonishing that it 
should have been confined to only a portion of the country, and 
that the efforts of the counties that "rose" were speedily sup- 
pressed? The astonishing thing is to find what these poorly-armed, 
leaderless people could do when they had capable officers. Be- 
tween 24th and 27th May there were engagements with the military 
at Naas, Clane, Prosperous, Kilcullen and Monasterevin in Kildare, 
at Dunboyne and Tara in Meath, at Baltinglass in Wicklow, at 
Lucan, Rathfarnham, and Tallaght in Dublin. Though the only 
definite success on the insurgents' side was at Prosperous, where 
they were capably led by Lieutenant Esmond, they gave such a good 
account of themselves that Government was very glad to make 
terms. How these "terms" were kept will be long remembered. 
Around Gibbet Rath on the Curragh of Kildare, where the assem- 
bled insurgents surrendered their arms, having previously obtained 
a promise of "pardon and liberty," they were set upon by Lord 
Roden, and his mounted "fencibles" and butchered in cold blood! 
In the meantime Wexford had "risen," goaded to the step by 



3 In St. Helena Napoleon expressed bitter regret for this act. He intimated 
that if he had chosen Ireland instead of Egypt, the current of history could have 
been radically changed. 

For Lord Edward's death — and the blow it was to Ireland — Ethna Carbery 
sings the lament of Mairin-Ni-Cullinan : — 

MAIRIN-NI-CULLINAN 

(Ireland's Lament for Lord Edward) 



Underneath the shrouding stone, 
Where you lie in Death alone, 

Can you hear me calling, calling. 
In a wild hot gush of woe? 

'Tis for you my tears are falling — 
For you, mo Chraoibhin Cno! 

When you stood up in the Green 
As beseemed the Geraldine, 

Slender sword a-glancing, glancing, 
Over you the tender sides, 

How the warrior-joy kept dancing, 
In your brave bright eyes. 

" 'Stdr," I said, "A st6r ma chroidhe, 
Hope of Mine and Hope of Me, 

Take our honour to your keeping, 
Bare your swift blade to the Dawn. 

Freedom's voice hath roused from 
sleeping 
Mairin-ni-Cullinan." 



So I dreamt the Day had come, 
Now your ardent lips are dumb, 

And the sword is rusty, rusty. 
Through a hundred weary years ; 

All the winds are blowing gusty 
With a storm of tears. 

'"Stor," I cry, above your bed, 
Where I kneel uncomforted — 

"Feel you not the battle-anger 
Shake the Nations of the World? 

While amid the stress and clangour, 
Still my Flag is furled. 

"Were you here, O Geraldine, 
This oblivion had not been." 

Thus I mourn you pining, pining, 
For the gallant heart long gone. 

Whose love was as a true star shin- 
ing 
To Mairin-ni-Cullinan. 



520 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

the atrocities of the Yeos and British troops these let loose. The 
story of Father John Murphy might stand for the story of Wex- . 
ford: its efforts for peace, its disinclination to resort to the arbi- 
tration of the sword as long as any other choice was left it — and 
then its sturdy courage, the extraordinary military ability shown ' 
by its improvised leaders : priests like Father John Murphy himself 
or his namesake, Father Michael, Father Philip Roche, and Father 
Doyle, young farmers like Edmund Kyan or Myles Byrne. It is 
in the vivid narrative of the latter that we must follow the events 
of the Wexford campaign — from that Whit Saturday when Father 
John Murphy "seeing his chapel and his home, like many others 
of the parish on fire, and in several of them the inhabitants con- 
sumed in the flames . . . betook himself to the next wood, 
where he was soon surrounded by the unfortunate people who had 
escaped, all came beseeching his Reverence to tell them what was 
to become of them and their poor families. He answered 
them abruptly that they had better die courageously in the field 
than be butchered in their houses; that for his own part, if he had 
any brave men to join him, he was resolved to sell his life dearly, 
and prove to those cruel monsters that they should not continue 
their murders and devastations with impunity. All answered and 
cried out that they were determined to follow his advice, and to do 
whatever he ordered. 'Well, then,' he replied, 'we must, when night 
comes, get armed the best way we can, with pitchforks and other 
weapons, and attack the Camolin Yeomen cavalry on their way 
back to Mountmorris, where they will return to pass the night 
after satisfying their savage rage on the defenceless country 
people.' " 

Father John's plans succeeded — and by the arms taken in the 
ambush of the Camolin Yeomen that night, and at Camolin Park 
the next day, his men reinforced their pitchforks with more effective 
weapons. The following day, Whit Sunday, he won a great victory 
with his Pikemen on Oulart Hill and followed it with the capture 
in quick succession of Camolin, Ferns, Enniscorthy, and Wexford. 
In a few days that whole southeastern country was in the hands 
of the insurgents except Duncannon Fort and New Ross. 

They had three encampments, one at Three Rocks, one seven 
miles west of Gorey, and one at Vinegar Hill, just outside Ennis- 
corthy. An attempt was made on New Ross on the 5th June but 
it failed after desperate fighting and severe losses on both sides. 
A few days later Gorey and Carnew were captured and the way 
to Arklow lay open. This town was assaulted on the 9th June, 
but by this time strong reinforcements had been sent to the military 



THE RISING OF 1798 521 

from Dublin. The battle lasted from four in the morning until 
late at night, but the death of Father Michael Murphy, charging 
bravely at the head of his column, turned what v/as on the point of 
being a success into a defeat. 

Government made a huge effort to stamp out the flames, and 
General Lake, who had succeeded Abercrombie as Commander-in- 
Chief, took the field in person. On June 21st the insurgents were 
attacked by overwhelming forces and defeated at their last strong- 
hold in Vinegar Hill. 

Even Castlereagh was roused to unwilling admiration of the 
martial qualities and achievements of the "boys of Wexford." 
"He could never have believed," he said, "that untrained peasants 
could have fought so well." Compared with their exploits the 
Ulstermen, who had been the "backbone" of the United Irish 
movement, and its most ardent advocates, made a poor showing. 
It was not until the 7th of June that Ulster made any move. The 
explanation is that the Ulster leader, Simms, got cowardly and 
shirked his post. The Rev, Mr. Dickson, who was appointed to 
take his place, was arrested, and only that the gallant Henry Joy 
McCracken rose from a bed of illness to step into the gap, Ulster's 
disgrace would have been complete. Under McCracken an attack 
was made on Antrim town on 7th June, which was retained by the 
military after a desperate struggle. A few days later McCracken 
was taken prisoner, and after a summary trial, was executed in 
Belfast. He, for one, had faithfully kept the oath made on the 
bright June day three years earlier when he had stood with Tone 
on Cave Hill — and swore to sacrifice everything even life itself 
for Ireland's liberty. 

The only other im.portant engagements in Ulster were at Saint- 
field and Newtownards, where the insurgents were successful, and 
at Ballinahinch where Monroe and his United Men were defeated 
by General Nugent. 

News of those events came in due time to Tone in France, and 
made him frantic with anxiety and impatience to be with his com- 
rades in Ireland, sharing their desperate fortunes. The last entry 
in his Journal, written on the 20th June — his thirty-fifth birthday, 
and the eve of the Battle of Vinegar Hill — shows him straining 
every nerve to get the dilatory French authorities to hurry forward 
the promised aid while the Irish were still in the field. General 
Grouchy (who had never forgiven himself for not throwing Bouvet 
overboard in Bantry Bay when the latter, opposing the landing, 
lost the greatest chance France ever knew) did all he could to 
second him; but General Kilmaine was more inclined to take the 



522 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Minister of Marine's point of view and defer the expedition until 
it could be carried out on "the grand scale," and at a more favour- 
able opportunity. Tone pointed out that it was now or never. An 
expedition on a "grand scale" was all very well, but "5,000 men 
that could be sent were better than 50,000 that could not." The 
time to assist the Irish was when they were still fighting; "in three 
months it might be too late, and the forces then sent, if the Irish 
were overpowered in the meantime, find themselves unsupported, 
and in their turn, be overpowered by the English !" 

By the beginning of July these arguments had their way with the 
the Directory. Tone was called to Paris to consult with the 
Ministers of War and Marine in the organisation of a new expe- 
dition. Tone's son explains clearly which were the proposals now 
accepted. 

The plan adopted was to dispatch small detachments from 
several ports, in the hope of keeping up the insurrection, until an 
opportunity should be found for landing the main body under 
General Kilmaine. General Humbert, with about 1,000 men, was 
quartered for this purpose at La Rochelle, General Hardy with 
3,000 at Brest, and Kilmaine with 9,000 remained in reserve. 

But the preparations were very slow, owing to the poverty of 
the FVench Government; and Humbert, a gallant soldier of fortune, 
whose heart was better than his head, fired by the recitals of the 
Irish refugees (who came to France in large numbers with awful 
tales of Irish suffering) , and urged on by the impetuous old Napper 
Tandy, determined to act on his own responsibility. Towards the 
end of August he requisitioned money and stores from the mer- 
chants and magistrates of La Rochelle, and "embarking on board 
a few frigates and transports, with 1,000 men, 1,000 spare mus- 
kets, 1,000 guineas, and a few pieces of artillery, he compelled the 
Captains to set sail for the most desperate attempt which is perhaps, 
recorded in history." Three Irishmen accompanied him: Matthew 
Tone, a brother of Theobald, Bartholomew Teeling, and Sullivan. 
The little expedition landed at Killala on 22nd August. That town, 
as well as Ballina, was taken without difficulty, and on the 27th 
of the month the French inflicted a great defeat on the "Red 
Coats" of General Lake at Castlebar. So swiftly did the English 
soldiers run from the desperate charge of the French and their 
Irish allies that the battle is known to this day as "the Races of 
Castlebar." 

In the meantime Cornwallis had landed in Ireland with im- 
mense reinforcements. Hastening to Lake's aid, he met Humbert 
at Ballinamuck (8th September), overpowered him by the mere 



THE RISING OF 1798 523 

force of numbers and compelled his surrender. The French 
soldiers taken were treated as prisoners of war. Their Irish 
auxiliaries were slaughtered. Matthew Tone and Bartly Teeling 
were courtmartialed and hanged. 

The Directory were naturally thrown into the greatest per- 
plexity by the news of Humbert's proceedings. They determined 
to hurry up the dispatch of the force under General Hardy. "But 
such was the state of the French navy and arsenals that it was 
not until the 20th September that this small expedition, consisting 
of one sail of the line, and eight frigates under Commodore 
Bompard and 3,000 men under General Hardy were ready for 
sailing. Four Irishmen accompanied the expedition: Wolfe Tone, 
Corbett, Maguire, and Hamilton. 

Tone had absolutely no delusions as to the expedition's chances 
of success. But he had said that if the French Government sent 
only a corporal's guard he would go with them. Such was the 
wretched indiscretion of the Government, that, before his depar- 
ture, he read in a Paris newspaper, the Bien Infonne, a detailed 
account of the whole armament, where his own name was mentioned 
in full letters, with the circumstance of his being embarked on board 
the Hoche. 

The flotilla, which had taken a wide sweep to avoid the English 
fleet, met with contrary winds and was scattered. After twenty 
days' cruise the Hoche, with two frigates, the Loire and the 
Rcsolue, and one schooner, the Biche, arrived off Loch Swilly. 
An English squadron under Sir John Borlace Warren, consisting 
of six sail of the line, one Razee of sixty guns, and two frigates, 
instantly bore down on them. The Hoche, a large and heavy man- 
of-war, had no chance of escape, so Bompard signalled the two 
frigates and schooner to make off through the shallow water and 
he, himself alone "to honour the flag of his country by a desperate 
defence." At that moment a boat came from the Biche for his 
last orders. That ship had the best chance to get off. The French 
officers all supplicated Tone to embark on board of her. "Our 
contest is hopeless," they observed, "we will be prisoners of war, 
but what of you?" "Shall it be said," replied he, "that I fled 
while the French were fighting the battle of my country?" 

And so, through the long hours of that desperate engagement 
wherein the Hoche stood up alone to the guns of five heavy British 
ships, he commanded one of the batteries, fighting with a courage 
which even these brave Frenchmen had never seen equalled. 

"During six hours the Hoche sustained the fire of a whole fleet, 
till her masts and rigging were swept away, her scuppers flowed 



524 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

with blood, her wounded filled the cock-pit, her scattered ribs 
yawned at each new stroke and let in five feet of water in the hold, 
her rudder was carried oft, and she floated a dismantled wreck 
on the waters; her sails and cordage hung in shreds, nor could 
she reply with a single gun from her dismounted batteries to the 
unabating cannonade of the enemy. At length she struck," and 
her personnel surrendered. 

At first. Tone, who had become in language and appearance a 
regular Frenchman, was not recognised among the French officers. 
His discovery was the act of a college friend of the old days in 
Trinity, one Sir George Hill. Narrowly scanning the features of 
(he French ofiicers who sat at breakfast at Letterkenny with the 
Earl of Cavan, he stopped before one and said, "Mr. Tone, I am 
very happy to see you." Cool as ever. Tone rose from his seat 
with a courteous: "Sir George, I am happy to see you, how are 
Lady Hill and your family?" A moment later he was being put 
in irons by military in the next room. The indignity roused him to 
a momentary outburst. Flinging off his uniform, he cried, "These 
fetters shall never degrade the revered insignia of the free nation 
which I have served." Then a new thought struck him — and he 
stretched forth his limbs proudly for their chains: "For the cause 
which I have embraced, I feel prouder to Avear these chains than 
if I were decorated with the star and garter of England." 

For the credit of human nature one would fain believe that 
even the Earl of Cavan and Sir George Hill and their followers 
would have been shamed into admiration at his generous and noble 
act. Alas! no indignity was spared him — and he was compelled 
to make the big journey from Letterkenny to Dublin, on horseback, 
with his legs pinioned beneath the horse's belly and his arms 
manacled ! On reaching Dublin he was thrown to the tender 
mercies of Major Sandys in the Provost's prison — whence he was 
only taken for his court-martial on the loth November. 

He made a gallant figure as he stood before his judges in the 
uniform of a French Colonel, making his last profession of faith 
in the principles to which he had devoted all that was his to give. 
"From my earliest youth I have regarded the connection between 
Ireland and Great Britain as the curse of the Irish nation, and felt 
convinced, that while it lasted, this country would never be free 
or happy. In consequence, I determined to apply all the powers 
which my individual efforts could move, in order to separate the 
two countries. That Ireland was not able, of herself, to throw off 
the yoke, I knew. I therefore sought for aid wherever it was to 
be found. . . . Under the flag of the French Republic I origi- 



THE RISING OF 1798 525 

nally engaged with a view to save and liberate my own country. 
For that purpose I have encountered the chances of war amongst 
strangers: for that purpose I have repeatedly braved the terrors 
of the ocean, covered as I knew it to be with the triumphant fleets 
of that Power which it was my glory and my duty to oppose. I 
have sacrificed all my views in life; I have courted poverty; I 
have left a beloved wife unprotected, and children whom I adored, 
fatherless. After such sacrifices, in a cause which I have always 
considered as the cause of justice and freedom — it is no great 
effort at this day to add the sacrifice of my life!" 

How that final sacrifice was made all the world knows. He 
had made but one request of his foes, that in deference to the 
uniform he wore he should be adjudged the death of a soldier. 
Even this poor favour was denied him. He was condemned to die 
ihe death of "a traitor" within forty-eight hours of the promulga- 
tion of his sentence. To save himself from that crowning indignity, 
while In the winter night the soldiers were erecting the gallows for 
him before his window, he inflicted a deep wound across his own 
throat with a penknife he had managed to secrete. Of this wound 
he died in great agony a week later — 19th November, 1798. 

They buried him at dead of night In the old cemetery at 
Bodenstown, by the side of his brother, Matthew, who had died 
for the same glorious cause a few weeks earlier. 

And there, side by side, those two mangled bodies — each broken 
so cruelly in the conqueror's murder machine — await the Resur- 
rection — In the "green grave" which Ireland cherishes as the most 
precious thing she owns. 

Authorities on the 1793-1803 period: 
Madden: Lives and Times of the United Irishmen. 
Tone: Autobiography of Theobald Wolfe Tone. 
Concannon (Mrs. Helena) : Women of '98. 
Fitzpatrick: Secret Service under Pitt, and The Sham Squire. 
Kavanagh: Rebellion of '98. 
Rev. Mr. Gordon: History of the Rebellion. 
Mitchel: History of Ireland. 
Fitzpatrick: Ireland before the Union. 



CHAPTER LX 

THE UNION ^ 

Although Ireland was officially conquered to Britain centuries 
before, the Island was alleged to have a Parliament of its own, 
under the British Crown, up to the year 1800. 

It was, of course, a Parliament of, and for, the British In 
Ireland. The mere Irish had no say In it — except for an insignifi- 
cantly brief period. Had no right even to vote for a member of 
it. It was not considered that they whose land this was, and who 
constituted six-sevenths of the population of the land, could pre- 
sume to take even the humblest part in governing their own country. 
The Parliament was for half a million British in Ireland — to 
hold three million Irish in subjection. Moreover, of the 300 mem- 
bers, only 72 were really elected. Three-fourths of its members 
were just appointed by the Borough owners, the British Lords 
who owned Irish towns. 

It was only at rare intervals that the Anglo-Irish who owned 
and ran this Parliament dared assert their right to make It a 
Parliament In reality, as well as in name. For centuries it was 
held in the stranglehold of Poyning's Law — a law which forbade 
it to initiate any legislation — only gave it liberty to legislate under 
the direction and command of the EngHsh Parliament — to pass into 
law whatever the English Parliament recommended — and to refrain 
from legislating upon all things that the English Parliament for- 
bade it to legislate upon. 

Under this state of things naturally Ireland's woes increased 
with the years. Just before the Anglo-Irish Parliament, in 1782, 
took heart to shake from its shoulders its Old Man of the Sea, the 
English Parliament which paralysed it, Hely Hutchinson, speaking 
in the Irish House of Commons (in 1779) said: "Can the history 
of any other fruitful country on the globe, enjoying peace for eighty 
years, and not visited by plague or pestilence, produce so many 

1 This chapter, with trifling change, is taken from Ireland's Case, by Seumas 
MacManus. 

526 



THE UNION 527 

recorded instances of the poverty and the wretchedness, of the 
reiterated want and misery of the lower order of people? There 
is no such example in ancient or modern story." 

In 1782, as we saw, when Britain's hands were filled with an 
American problem, Henry Grattan and the great army of Ireland's 
Volunteers, 100,000 strong, demanded the independence of their 
Parliament. And as they had in their hands, when making the 
request, a hundred thousand muskets, their request was graciously 
granted. During the succeeding years, this Anglo-Irish Parliament, 
acting independently of the British Parliament, was enabled to do 
Avonderful things for the restoration of Ireland's commerce and 
manufactures. Many of the disabilities of the Irish Catholics, too, 
were, under it, removed — and an Irishman was acknowledged to 
have some citizen rights. 

But, it did not suit England's book to have any body of people 
in Ireland, even their own Anglo-Irish kin, running Ireland with 
profit to Ireland — and consequently a curtailment of English profit. 
So, the mistake must be corrected. And the best way to correct it 
was bodily to remove the cause of the trouble. Parliament, both in 
reality and in name, must be taken from Ireland altogether. So, 
Prime Minister Pitt of England conspired with his good instru- 
ments, Cornwallis, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and Castlereagh, 
the Irish Secretary, to attain the desired end. For this splendidly 
corrupt object Pitt fortunately had, in Cornwallis and Castlereagh, 
a pair of splendidly corrupt tools. 

To undermine the prestige of the Irish Parliament and prove 
its incompetence for governing Ireland, they first goaded the Irish 
people into a premature rebellion. And they then launched their 
campaign for giving to the English Parliament the sole right of 
directly governing this Island. 

That the Anglo-Irish inhabitants of the Island would not easily 
yield their right Pitt and his instruments knew well. But that a 
large portion of their representatives was purchasable, they divined. 
So they set themselves enthusiastically to the congenial work of 
bribing and debasing right and left, and buying men's souls. 

Lies, perjury, and fraud were the oflUcial stock-in-trade during 
all of Britain's connection with Ireland. But there was never 
another period in which so much baseness was crowded into so 
little time as now, when they were debasing their own kin and rob- 
bing them of their "rights." No other scandal of British admin- 
istration, before or since, ever equalled this one of buying the 
Union. The immediate chief instruments, Cornwallis and Castle- 
reagh, were probably no worse than any other English administra- 



528 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

tors in Ireland — only that this large job gave them an exceptional 
opportunity to distinguish themselves." , 

Cornwallis, through all the vile business, took the superior 
stand of the hypocrite who thinks he conceals his hypocrisy beneath 
the cloak of frankness. He writes to a friend, "My occupation 
is of the most unpleasant nature, bargaining and jobbing with the 
most corrupt people under Heaven" (the Anglo-Irish). "I despise 
and hate myself for ever engaging in such dirty work." In another 
place he confesses that he is "involved in this dirty business beyond 
all bearing." 

The people were wheedled, coaxed, threatened, and bribed, into 
signing petitions in favor of Union with England. Barrington 
tells us that, under promise of pardon, felons in the jails were got 
to sign the Union petition. Everyone holding a government job 
in the country had not only to sign the petition himself, but was 
compelled to make his relatives and the relatives of their relatives 
sign it likewise. 

Not merely those who held positions under the government 
were required to do this; but to every man who hoped or dreamt 
of ever standing chance of a position under the government, it was 
plainly intimated that he and his relatives' relatives must become 
petitioners. Mixed bribes a«nd threats were scattered over the land 
like seed corn — falling upon, sticking to, and germinating in thou- 
sands upon thousands of every rank from the public hangman all the 
way up to the Archbishop of the Established Church. 

The pro-British historian, Lecky, says, "Obscure men in un- 
known political places were dismissed because they or some of their 
relatives declined to support it." He says, "The whole force of 
Government patronage in all branches was steadily employed. The 
formal and authoritative announcement was made, that, though 
defeated Session after Session and Parliament after Parliament — 
the act of Union would always be reintroduced — and that support 
of it would hereafter be considered the main test by which all claims 
to government favor would be determined." — "Everything in the 
government of the Crown in Ireland," Lecky further states, "in 
the church, in the army, in the law, in the revenue, was uniformly 
and steadily devoted to the single purpose of carrying the Union. 
From the great noblemen who were bought for marquisates and 
ribands; from the (Protestant) Archbishop of Cashel who agreed 
to support the Union on being promised the reversion of the See 

2 Castlereagh indeed partly redeemed himself by living to cut his throat. 



THE UNION 529 

of Dublin and a seat in the Imperial House of Lords, the virus 
of corruption extended and descended through every rank and title, 
and saturated the pohtical system, including even crowds of obscure 
men who had it in their power to assist or obstruct addresses on the 
subject." 

Men who dared be independent and stand for their rights were 
hounded and persecuted and dismissed from office. Even the high- 
est in rank, such as the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and a Prime 
Sergeant and Privy Chancellor, were kicked out for daring to deny 
England's divine right to do wrong. 

Men who refused to be bribed were forced out of their seats 
in the Irish Parliament by every vile means known to vile men. 
Their own instruments, their own official aides, even, were put into 
office and put into Parliament for the openly avowed purpose of 
voting away Ireland's rights. Englishmen who never before had 
given any thought to Ireland, were actually imported to sit as 
Irish members of Parliament — and vote away Ireland's Parliament 
to England.^ 

They overawed patriotic people who ventured to make any 
protest against the proposed Union. Barrington relates how, on 
the occasion of an Anti-Union meeting in King's County, Darley, 
the High Sheriff, and Major Rogers (acting of course under in- 
structions from Dublin Castle) placed two six pounders, charged 
with grape shot, opposite the Court-house where the meeting was 
being held — bringing England's logic to bear on the misguided ones 
who thought they could better know than England, what was for 
Ireland's benefit. 

The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended. 

Martial law was proclaimed. 

England stationed in Ireland, 126,000 soldiers. 

All constitutional guarantee was annulled. 

The use of torture was frequently availed of. 

Meetings of the people were dispersed by military force. 

Offices and commands were trafficked In. 

Every foul device that the most ingeniously mean-minded tools 
could contrive was employed against Irish liberty — or Anglo-Irish 
liberty. 

3 Some of these latter rascals never saw — sometimes hardly knew — the name of 
the Irish Boroug-h for which they sat. When one of them, one day, presented him- 
self at the English House of Parliament and requested some privilege that was of 
courtesy accorded there to members of the Irish Parliament, he was asked for what 
Irish Borough he sat. "By Heaven," he replied, "the name of the devilish place 'as 
escaped me. — But if you bring me the Irish Directory I believe I can pick it out," 



530 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

And by use of all conceivable and inconceivable mean devices 
they managed, at length, to secure a bare majority in favour of the 
Union — 162 out of 303 members. One hundred and sixteen of 
these 162 were their own salaried tools — placemen. 

They carried their "Union." It has been stated that as much 
as eight thousand pounds was paid for one vote. Henry Grattan 
is authority for it that, of those who voted in favour of the Union 
with England, not more than seven were unbribed. Cornwallis had 
no illusions about the quality of the men whom he purchased — 
knew right well that they could be just as faithless to him, despite 
his gold, as they were to their adopted country, despite their duty. 
He wrote, "I believe that half of our majority would be as much 
delighted as any of our opponents, if the measure could be de- 
feated." 

Place, title, and gold, were the inducements for sacrificing 
Ireland at England's bidding. As reward for good work, done — 
or to be done — twenty-eight Irish peerages were created. Six 
Irish peers got English peerages. Twenty Irish peers were ele- 
vated in rank. New and hicrative jobs, offices, government appoint- 
ments, were created — for bestowal on those who rendered 
"services." 

In those days the boroughs in Ireland were "owned" by Lordly 
proprietors who put in for them such puppet members of Parlia- 
ment as they pleased. In 1782, out of 300 members, only 72 were 
really elected — and of course only one-seventh of the people in 
Ireland (the British portion) got a chance at electing those. This 
ownership came to be recognised by law! And to compensate 
eighty titled Borough owners in Ireland (who owned one hun- 
dred and sixty members) an act was passed appropriating for 
them £1,260,000 — being at the rate of about £8,000 for each 
member. 

And, crowning joke of all the grim jokes played upon Ireland 
by England, this million and quarter for greasing the groove down 
which Ireland's Parliament was to be skidded to England — was 
added to the Irish National Debt! 

Lord Ely, who had at first been opposed to the Union, but 
came finally to see the light and voted for it, received £45,000 
for his Boroughs. 

These moneys were paid as "compensation" for "disturbance" 
caused, or to be caused, or in danger of being caused, by the Union. 
And not only Anglo-Irishmen but likewise every pocket-picking 
Englishman and hungry Scotchman who could get near it, fought 



THE UNION 531 

and struggled and mauled one another, for the chance of getting 
a hand in the Compensation bag.* 

And this wonderful story of Ireland's eager Union with 
England is a fair illustration of England's clean handedness, clean 
mindedness, in dealing with the island that was and is "dependent 
on and protected by England." 

The carrying of the Union reflected nearly as much credit upon 
England's nice honour, as did the Treaty of Limerick upon the 
pledged faith and honour of the British Crown. 

Barrington: The Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation. 

" Personal Sketches. 

Swift MacNeill: The Irish Parliament. 
Lecky: History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century. 

* Barrington records that even the necessary woman of the English Privy 
Council asked "compensation" from Ireland for the extra trouble which the influx 
of Irish Privy Councillors would cause in her department ! 

And the Lord Lieutenant's official rat catcher insisted on the right to get his 
paw in the bag as compensation for "decrease of employment." Why the Union 
with England should affect this gentleman's employment is not stated — but it is 
easy to suppose that he foresaw the certainty of droves of British rats quitting the 
sinking ship. 

Daniel O'Connell once said, that he could not, under Heaven, apprehend how 
it was that they forgot to charge against Ireland the price of the razor with which 
Castlereagh afterwards cut his throat. 



CHAPTER LXI 

ROBERT EMMET 

When the Insurgents had laid down their arms, the country was 
given over to further horrors. The idea was to break the spirit 
so thoroughly, by a calculated campaign of "frightfulness," that 
Ireland should never dare to dream of liberty again, or offer the 
slightest resistance to the new chains that were being forged for 
her in the "Legislative Union" with England. 

So all through the bright summer days that followed the day 
of "Vinegar Hill" the shrieks of tortured men came from the 
Prevot Prison in the Royal Barracks, Dublin, where Major Sandys 
had set up his triangles, or from the "riding school" in Marl- 
borough Street, where Mr. John Claudius Beresford carried on 
his pitch-cappings and picketings, his half hangings and his lacera- 
tions. Day after day were court martials, followed immediately 
by executions. Day after day the most terrible tales reached the 
Capital of the atrocities committed by the militia, the "Yeos" and 
the "Hessians" in the districts where they were now supreme. The 
statistics preserved by Cloney, for Wexford alone, of women vio- 
lated, and then bayoneted or shot, of unarmed folk slaughtered 
in the fields and along the roads, of whole families burned alive 
in their cabins, of wounded men incinerated in the hospital at Ennis- 
corthy (which went ablaze through a mere accident — "the bed 
clothes being set on fire by the wadding of the soldiers' guns, who 
were shooting the patients in their beds"), represent a degree of 
human suffering which even at this distance of time makes us sick 
to read of. 

What of those who in their prison cells — the State Prisoners 
like Thomas Addis Emmet, Thomas Russell, John Sweetman, 
Arthur O'Connor, Samuel Neilson — were hearing of them from 
day to day? Does one wonder that when a proposal came from 
Government that these horrors would be stopped, on certain con- 
ditions when men of honour could accept, they felt it their duty 
to explore the avenues to peace thus indicated? On the initiative 
of Mr. Dobbs, acting for the Government, seventy-three prisoners 
in Newgate, Kilmainham and Bridewell, put their names to a paper 

532 



ROBERT EMMET 533 

engaging to give every information in their power as to the whole 
internal transactions of the United Irishmen, and their negotiations 
with foreign states, with the proviso that they were not by naming 
or describing to implicate any person whatever. In return the 
executions were to be stopped, and the State Prisoners allowed to 
emigrate to a country to be agreed upon between them and the 
Government. 

This agreement was kept with the most scrupulous exactitude 
by the State Prisoners. But nobody who knows the Government's 
record for tearing up "scraps of paper" will be very much sur- 
prised to learn that its conditions were grossly violated by the 
Irish Executive — even though one of its own members, Lord Clare, 
had thus expressed himself to one among the prisoners, who raised 
a doubt as to the Executive's good faith: "Gentlemen, it comes 
to this — a Government that breaks faith with you could not stand, 
and ought not be allowed to stand." 

The ink was hardly dry upon the paper when one of the con- 
demned prisoners, Byrne (to save whose life was the immediate 
object of the treaty), was, in flagrant violation of its provisions, 
led forth to execution. The other, Oliver Bond, was murdered 
in prison. 

The State Prisoners, themselves, who signed the agreement 
were (also in violation of it) kept in prison, or internment in Fort 
George, Scotland, during the remaining four years of the war 
then raging with France. Worse still — though the fact will sur- 
prise no one acquainted with the records of English propaganda — 
a garbled account of the whole business, very injurious to the 
United Irishmen, was sent forth broadcast; and the prisoners' 
remonstrations were met by a peremptory message from Lord 
Lieutenant CornwalHs that if they dared to say another word he 
would annul the agreement, and go forward with wholesale 
executions. 

This breach of faith on the part of Government caused the 
State Prisoners to consider the contract null and void on their 
side also; and as may readily be surmised, they looked eagerly 
around, after their liberation from Fort George in the summer of 
1802, for a chance to strike a blow once more for Irish Inde- 
pendence. 

Everybody knew that the war between France and England, 
to which the peace of Amiens had put a temporary cessation, would 
soon break out again; and it was common belief likewise that 
when the war did break out, an Invasion by Bonaparte either of 
England or Ireland would be attempted. 



534 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

The United Irishmen, both on the continent and in Ireland, 
therefore (and in spite of all that had happened they were still 
numerous and powerful in the homeland) , were prepared to sacrifice 
their just resentment against France for her failure to keep her 
engagements with them in '98, and enter into a new alliance with 
her. They had recruited unexpected allies in Ireland, itself, from 
among certain statesmen and politicians, who had formerly been 
their bitterest enemies, but who now saw themselves, to an equal 
degree, the victims of English intrigue — left high and dry by the 
"Legislative Union." It is morally certain, indeed, that though 
these statesmen kept themselves well and safely in the background 
during the events which make 1803 as tragic a memory as 1798, 
they took the initiative in the secret negotiations which led to 
them. Who were they? Shall we ever know more than Robert 
Emmet (who paid the penalty of their deeds) has chosen to tell 
us of them as he stood in the dock, making his immortal appeal to 
the yet unborn tribunal of his liberated country's judgment? 
"When I came to Ireland I found the business ripe for execution. 
I was asked to join in it. I took time to consider, and after mature 
deliberation I became one of the Provisional Government; and 
there then was my Lords, an agent from the United Irishmen and 
Provisional Government in Paris, negotiating with the French Gov- 
ernment to obtain from them an aid sufficient to accomplish the 
separation of Ireland from Great Britain; the preliminary to 
which assistance has been a guarantee to Ireland similar to that 
which Franklin obtained for America." And again: "I have been 
charged with that importance in the efforts to emancipate my 
country as to be considered the keystone of the combination of 
Irishmen, or as it has been expressed, 'the life and blood of this 
conspiracy.' You do me honour ov^ermuch; you have given to 
the subaltern all the credit of the superior. There are men con- 
cerned in this conspiracy, who are not only superior to me but even 
to your own conceptions of yourself, my lord; men before the 
splendour of whose genius and virtues I should bow with respectful 
deference, and who would not deign to call you friend — who would 
not disgrace themselves by shaking your blood-stained hand." 

The Agent of the United Irishmen in Paris, referred to above, 
was Thomas Addis Emmet, who left Brussels for the French 
Capital early in 1803, to act in that capacity on definite instructions 
from the Provisional Government In Ireland. We possess in his 
diary from the 30th of May, 1803, to the loth of March, 1804, 
with its detailed account of his transactions with the French Gov- 



ROBERT EMMET 535 

ernment, then controlled by Bonaparte and Talleyrand, all the 
evidence required to prove that the Rising of 1803, so far from 
being, as Lord Castlereagh estimated it, "the wild and contemptible 
project of a young man of heated and enthusiastic imagination" 
was the well thought out plan of long-headed men and had a 
priori good reason to promise success. 

In the first place there was an absolute promise on the part of 
France of a large expeditionary force to aid the Rising in Ireland. 
In the second, there was an understanding with, and guarantees of 
co-operation from the revolutionary societies in England and 
Scotland. In the third, there were pledges from men of the highest 
social, military and political standing in Ireland to aid the move- 
ment with money, moral and other backing. If ever an effort for 
Irish Liberty seemed destined to succeed. It was that to which 
Robert Emmet found himself committed when he returned to 
Ireland, after his "Grand Tour" on the continent, In the Autumn 
of 1802. 

His first care, after he became organiser for the Provisional 
Government (which, as has been already said, had been formed 
before his return) was to get In touch with surviving fighters of '98, 
men like Myles Byrne of Wexford, and Jimmie Hope of Belfast. 
It is to the narratives of these two In particular that we owe our 
best knowledge of his alms and hopes, and the methods he adopted 
to attain them. 

His primary object was to get the country organised and armed, 
ready to co-operate with the French landing. The organisation 
of the counties was left to tried men of local Influence, and as 
early as the Autumn of 1802 Emmet was able to assure John Keogh 
and John Philpot Curran that "nineteen counties could be relied 
upon." Very influential promises of help came from the North 
in particular, and the business of procuring arms went briskly for- 
ward. Early in 1803 Thomas Russell, his nephew-in-law, Ham- 
ilton, and Quigley, came over from France to help, and the greatest 
hopes were entertained that Russell's Influence In Ulster would 
keep it straight this time, at least — though it had failed so griev- 
ously in '98. 

Emmet's own work was mainly confined to Dublin, but he was 
in close touch with the men of Carlow, WIcklow, Wexford, through 
his friends Michael Dwyer and Myles Byrne, and with the men 
of Kildare through one Bernard Duggan and others. Alas, Mr. 
Bernard Duggan, as we now know, was a paid Castle spy; and 
all the preparations for the Rising were faithfully retailed to his 



536 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

employer, the Under Secretary Mr. Alexander Marston, who let 
them go forward, having the comfortable assurance that he could 
circumvent them the moment it suited his own purpose ! 

On the 1 6th July an explosion took place in a house in Patrick 
Street, which Emmet had taken as a depot for arms and explosives. 
This event, which made him regard the discovery of his plans as 
imminent, caused him to fix an early date for the Rising without 
waiting for the promised French aid. It may have been that 
Russell had infected him with his own fears that Bonaparte was 
only playing with the Irish, and this may have been an additional 
motive for hurrying him on. Assurances came from all over the 
country that if Dublin rose the rest of Ireland would speedily 
follow. 

Saturday, the 23rd of July, was the day arranged for the Rising 
in Dublin, in which the Wicklow, Kildare and Wexford men were 
to assist. The plans included an attack not only on Dublin Castle, 
but on the Pigeon House Fort and the Artillery Barracks at Island 
Bridge. But on the day appointed it was discovered that only a 
small fraction of the men expected to help had turned up. "I 
expected," Emmet himself tells us, "two thousand to assemble at 
Costigan's Mills — the grand plajce of assembly. The evening be- 
fore the Wicklow men failed through their officer. The Kildare 
men, who were to act particularly with me, came in, and at five 
o'clock went off again, from the canal harbour, on a report from 
two of their officers that Dublin would not act. 

"In Dublin itself it was given out by some treacherous or cow- 
ardly person that it (the Rising) was postponed until Wednesday. 
The; time of assembly was from 6 to 9, and at 9 instead of 2,000 
there were only 80 men assembled." 

The romantic sequel of Robert Emmet's story has given to 
the occurrences of the 23d of July an importance which the men 
who organised the CQnspiracy of which they were only an incident, 
did not recognise. One part of the plan, the Rising in Dublin, had 
miscarried, through no fault of Robert Emmet's; but if the French 
had been true to their plighted word the rest of the country would 
have risen later, according to plan, and the dream to which the 
gallant youth sacrificed fortune, life, and love, might yet have come 
true. 

But the French failed their Irish allies once more, and Thomas 
Addis Emmet, though he still continued for a time his negotiations 
with the agents of the First Consul, and though he actually saw 
an Irish Legion embodied, and Irish colours prepared for an 
expeditionary force, had at length to convince himself that "Bona- 



ROBERT EMMET 537 

parte was the worst enemy Ireland ever had," a man who played 
with her hopes and utilised them for his own purpose. In 1804 
Emmet shook the soil of France from his feet forever, and set 
sail for the great Western Republic where fame, success and happi- 
ness, and in the fulness of time, an honoured tomb were awaiting 
him. 

As for his brother, Robert, when he saw the blood of Lord 
Kilwarden stain the stones of that Dublin street, he dispersed his 
followers, and sought but Michael Dwyer in the Wicklow hills. 
Dwyer and his men (whose failure to be present at the rendezvous 
was due to a gross dereliction of duty on the part of the man 
charged with the message for them) urged that an attempt should 
be made on the neighbouring towns, but Emmet determined to do 
nothing more until the promised French aid had arrived. To 
expedite its coming he sent Myles Byrne to France with an urgent 
message to his brother, Thomas Addis. 

Before Myles Byrne had arrived in Paris, Robert had been 
arrested by Major Sirr at Harold's Cross, to whose dangerous 
neighbourhood he had been drawn by an overpowering desire to 
see once more his "bright love" the exquisite Sarah Curran. On 
the 19th of September, two days after Byrne had delivered his 
message to Thomas Addis, Robert Emmet stood in the dock in 
Green Street, uttering that immortal oration which no one who 
loves great poetry or high passion can ever read without all that 
IS best in him flaming up at the contact of its fire. On the 20th 
of September the saa-ifice was consummated. The brave youth 
was publicly beheaded on a Dublin street. 

Authorities: 
Madden : Lives of the United Irishmen. 
Myles Byrne's Memoirs. 

Thomas Addis Emmet: The Emmet Family. 
O'Donoghue: Life of Robert Emmet. 
Mitchel: Historj^ of Ireland. 



CHAPTER LXII 

DANIEL O'CONNELL 

Throughout almost the first half of the nineteenth century Ire- 
land's history is reflected in the life of Daniel O'Connell. 

O'Connell was thirty-three years of age when his national 
career began. That was in 1808, when the Catholic Committee, 
which sought to get for Catholic citizens their rights, began to be 
riven between the aristocratic advocates of "dignified silence," led 
by the aged Keogh, and the revolutionary advocates of agitation, 
of whom O'Connell assumed the spokesmanship. 

The great man was born in Cahirciveen in the southwest of 
Kerry. Various biographers of O'Connell give us interesting 
glimpses of what life was like on the western seaboard in the lat- 
ter part of the eighteenth century. Cut off, as they were, from 
the rest of the world by wild mountain ranges, the ancient family 
of the O'Connells had succeeded in retaining a larger share of 
the world's goods than the laws permitted to Papists, though 
even for their partial good luck they had to thank strategy as 
well as the mountain barriers. O'Connell's father held his lands 
for long years by leaving them in the legal possession of his Prot- 
estant friend, Hugh Falvey (who had conformed for emolument 
sake). From the smuggling trade then common in the whole 
west of Ireland, the O'Connell family had long derived a steady 
income. Wines, brandies, velvets, and other taxable commodities, 
were being constantly imported from the Continent, without get- 
ting the gauger's blessing — and circulated inland. The smuggling 
smacks which constantly ran these goods into the western bays, 
carried av/ay with them miscellaneous export cargoes — "Wild 
Geese," young men for the Irish Brigade in France and for other 
Continental armies; students for the schools of Spain, Italy, Aus- 
tria, France, Flanders; the flannel homespun of the cottage looms; 
Irish butter, hides and wool. And the seaweed called slaucan 
(sloke) for which the Spanish appetite craved, was exported by 
the women to raise spare money for themselves. We are told 
that in the O'Connell country — as probably happened in many 

538 



DANIEL O'CONNELL 539 

other western regions — the women used to borrow one another's 
cloaks to go to the Spanish market in the smuggling smacks, and 
there sell their own slaucan. 

O'Connell's uncle, Daniel, was one of the many Wild Geese 
which the smuggling smacks carried away to the great world of 
war and romance, abroad; and when that man sailed there were 
no less than seventeen of the O'Connell kinsmen in foreign service. 
He became Count O'Connell, and was the last Colonel of the Irish 
Brigade. As he was a royalist, the French Revolution, in time, 
threw him back upon England — where he became a fine, crusty 
old Tory — and bitter opponent of his nephew's Repeal idea. 

In O'Connell's infancy the splendid Paul Jones was scouring 
the seas off the Kerry headlands, and giving England many un- 
comfortable gasps. Then, the banned priest, Father O'Grady 
(graduate of Louvain) hidden by the great hills from the Gov- 
ernment's eyes and spies (though once tried for the crime of being 
a Papist priest, and freed for want of evidence) was teaching 
the child Dan his catechism. And the itinerant schoolmaster, 
David O'Mahony, likewise banned by the paternal government, 
was instructing the child in the complications and combinations 
of Cadmus' invention — and while he nursed him and combed his 
hair "without hurting," the infant protege, it is recorded, learned 
the whole alphabet in an hour and a half. And the child saw 
''Cousin Kane," a landless half-sir who was typical of the times, 
with his pair of hunters and twelve couples of dogs, circulating 
among the gentry of Kerry, and honouring and living off each in 
turn. 

The O'Connells were a great, strong, long-lived and prolific 
family. Though, in those days and in those districts, such was 
too common to deserve mention. Dan's immediate parents in- 
deed were somewhat exceptional. They had only ten children. 
Grandfather O'Connell and his celebrated wife (of the O'Dono- 
hue family) Maire Ni Duibh, had twenty-two. The ancient Irish 
system of fosterage was still common in the mountains, and Dan's 
father and many uncles had all, for the first few years of their 
lives, been fostered by neighbours, relatives, friends, tenants. 

Young Dan himself was fostered by his Uncle Maurice — "Old 
Hunting Cap" as he was known, because to evade the tax upon 
gentlemen's beaver hats. Uncle Maurice resolutely lived under a 
hunting cap. The unceremoniousness of Old Hunting Cap and 
his household is well illustrated by a characteristic incident re- 
corded of the country carpenter's shoving his tousled head in at 
the dining-room door when the household with their guests had 



540 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

well begun upon the plentiful pile that always bent their festive 
board. 

"Go away, Buckley," said Mrs. O'Connell. "This is no time 
to talk business." 

"I'm sorry, ma'am, in troth, but I just only wanted a word of 
his honour, about his coffin." 

Old Hunting Cap a few days before had given orders that a 
coffin should be prepared for him from a loved oak-tree that was 
being cut down on the lawn. 

"Coffin or no coffin, to-morrow will be a long enough day to 
talk of it." 

"No, no, bean a'tighe, let us hear what he wants — what's the 
matter about the coffin, Buckley?" says Old Hunting Cap. 

" 'Tis to fix about the measurements that will make your hon- 
our comfortable." 

Then ensues a wrangle between Old Hunting Cap and the 
carpenter regarding the space that should make a coffined man 
comfortable — while the diners pause and listen. Old Hunting 
Cap objects to the generous measurements that the carpenter in- 
sists on allowing him. "You know my height is only six foot 
two." 

"But your honour forgets that you'll stretch after you're a 
corp." 

"That's so, to be sure. You're right, Buckley. Then leave 
me three inches for stretching." 

"All right, your honour, I'll make It six foot six to the good, 
so as to give you no chance of complaint. Good night and ex- 
cuse me." 

"Good night, Buckley, and thank you." 

And while knives and forks begin to ply again, Old Hunting 
Cap bravely resumes the discussion in which he had been inter- 
rupted by the coffin-maker's intrusion. 

After David O'Mahony's fireside teaching, and then some 
schooling in Cork, Daniel O'Connell had a short university term 
at St. Omer, in Flanders, and then at Douay in France — short, 
because of the French Revolution, which closed Douay in the 
beginning of 1793 — just when he had completed two years of 
university study. 

What he saw and heard of this revolution made him a Tory. 
It might be more correct to say that it confirmed Toryism in him; 
for the O'Connell family, taking example from their friends, the 
well-to-do Anglo-Irish county gentry, were always Tory. 

And when the French came into Bantry Bay in '96 to assist 



DANIEL O'CONNELL 541 

the United Irishmen, Uncle Maurice, good loyalist, just missed 
being the first to get the intelligence to the English Government. 
The man who was first got a fortune. In his diary Dan then wrote 
apropos of the French visit (probably recalling his experience of 
one revolution) : "Liberty is in my bosom less a principle than 
a passion. . . . But Ireland is not yet sufficiently enlightened to 
bear the sun of liberty. Freedom would soon dwindle into licen- 
tiousness. They would rob; they would murder. The altar of 
liberty totters when cemented only with blood, when supported 
with carcasses. The liberty I look for is that which would in- 
crease the happiness of mankind."* 

But Dan's Toryism almost completely fell away from him 
when, studying for the Bar at Lincoln's Inn in London in '94 — 
for the ban against Papists entering the outer bar, had just been 
lifted — he attended the trial of Home Tooke, and saw and learnt 
at first hand the astounding tyranny and intolerance practised by 
the rulers on their own people. 

And in Dublin, a few years later, he associated with the United 
Irishmen and, it is believed, joined them. Anyhow he shared 
their national sentiments. Yet, when the hour of action came, 
Daniel O'Connell slipped out of Dublin by sea, and rusticated for 
a time in the safety of his Kerry home. There evidently reading 
the official accounts of the barbarity of the wicked rebels, whom 
the kind Government reluctantly chastised, he grievingly com- 
munes with his diary about the outrages that are committed in 
liberty's name! He thinks he sees in Ireland a repetition of what 
he knew in France — the unbridled blood-lust of a frenzied and 
ignorant populace that had suddenly burst its bonds. 

And when he returned to Dublin he evidently became a good, 
pious Tory again. For although he was bitterly anti-Union (like 
the great body of the Tories in Ireland), when the Emmet alarm 
burst on the country in 1803, he flew to arms to preserve the Con- 
stitution, He was one of the Lawyers' Corps that was then formed 
for defence of the realm against the assault of French principles. 
In far later days when it was less objectionable to sympathise with 
Emmet, O'Connell tried to justify his action by exclaiming: 
"Poor Emmet, he meant well I But was ever a madder scheme 
conceived outside of Bedlam than that of facing, with seventy- 

1 This is the first indication we have of O'Connell's abject respect for law. It 
did not press itself upon him that the foreigner in his country was every year in- 
dulging in robbery and murder — even of his own kin. The foreigner did it "legally" 
— prescribed robbing and killing by Parliamentary Statute, and hence it shocked 
him not. 



542 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

four men and twelve hundred pounds, King George and one hun- 
dred and fifty thousand of the best troops in Europe — with finances 
unlimited." " 

It was in 1808, as before mentioned, that O'Connell first got 
marked prominence in Irish affairs. In that year Fox and Greville, 
in the British Parliament, had sought to remove a few of the 
smaller restrictions under which the banned Catholics laboured. 
It was a belated pretence at redeeming the bribe-promise made 
them in '99 that after the Union the British Parliament would 
emancipate them. But even the very sorry bill of Fox and Gre- 
ville, which only emphasised their slavery by essaying to hack 
away some of the. loose links that dangled from their chains, 
aroused a no-popery wave which overswept England, engulfed 
Fox, Greville and their Parliament, and put in power a no-popery 
party. This dashed the hopes of the Catholic Committee of Ire- 
land — a committee which almost entirely represented the aristo- 
cratic Catholics, the bishops and the wealthy merchant and pro- 
fessional class. It was then that the former Catholic leader, Keogh, 
now an old man, recommended as the best policy for the Catholics 
"dignified silence." But O'Connell, with the bounding blood of 
youth, caught the ear and the mind of the country at large, by 
hotly opposing this servile policy, and urging agitation for their 
commonest rights. All the more thoroughly did he arouse the 
country by hammering on the fact that the aristocrats and their 
fellows were willing to give the English government a veto upon 
the appointment of Roman Catholic bishops in Ireland in exchange 
for the few beggarly crumbs with which Fox had tempted them. 

When it was now disclosed that in '99 ten bishop trustees of 
Maynooth College had secretly agreed to the veto, O'Connell so 
roused the country and evoked such an outburst of wrath as com- 
pelled twenty-six bishops in council to repudiate the offer, and 
swing into the popular camp. And then the nation, which since 
the cataclysm of 1 798-1 800 had been pitifully drifting, joyfully 
hailed a new captain! 

But several years were yet to pass before the new captain called 
up in his people's hearts the extraordinary confidence and the pride 

2 This is one of the many instances we have of the astonishing nearsightedness 
of a very great man. Emmet's failure in Dublin was a more permanent, more 
far-reaching success than Wellington's triumph at Waterloo — for, more than a 
hundred years after, the memory of his heroism, his patriotism, and his faith was 
enthusing, inspiring, stimulating and sustaining one of the world's smallest nations 
in its unending struggle against earth's most powerful EiTif)ire. But Daniel O'Con- 
nell throughout his wonderful career was always the lawyer or politician, who 
could only be convinced by immediate results. 



DANIEL O'CONNELL 543 

that were to make him the mightiest power in the nation. His 
defence of John Magee in '13 was to put him on a unique pedestal, 
and, a little later, the tidal wave of enthusiasm created by his 
victory over D'Esterre was to sweep him into the popular heart 
and there enthrone him. 

But before those golden milestones were reached the people 
had learnt to know his great qualities as he fought shoulder to 
shoulder with them In the Catholic cause. The demure Catholic 
Board he turned into a Board of such boldness that the Govern- 
ment suppressed it in 181 1. And, beginning the legal and political 
strategy that was to be, later, his staple manoeuvre, he re-formed 
the association under the name of a General Committee of the 
Catholics of Ireland. And henceforward, through his career, im- 
mediately his organisation under one title was suppressed, he was 
ready to re-start it next day under a new name. 

But, leading his people in the desert now, he had not only to 
fight the oppressor without but also the aristocratic and reactionary 
element within. And when In '13 those Protestant champions of 
Catholic Emancipation, Grattan and Plunkett, had introduced in 
Parliament a Catholic Relief Bill which had every chance of pass- 
ing, and which had the approval of the Irish Catholic aristocratic 
party and the English Catholics, O'Connell aroused Ireland 
against it because It was saddled with the objectionable veto and 
also gave to the British the right to supervise all documents pass- 
ing between Rome and the Roman Catholic hierarchy In these 
islands. 

The British Government got Quarantotti, Secretary and Vice- 
Prefect of the Sacred College who was then, so to speak, acting 
Pope — Plus the Seventh being a prisoner of Napoleon — to ap- 
prove the veto and the supervision right, and issue a rescript to 
the Irish bishops to that effect. Then was precipitated turmoil in 
Ireland. From the altar steps of the chapel of the Friars in Clar- 
endon Street, Dublin, O'Connell denounced the rescript to an ex- 
cited gathering. He threatened the prelates and threatened the 
secular clergy, that, If they signed themselves over to England, 
the people, refusing their ministrations, would import poor friars 
from the continent of Europe, and willingly revert to the depriva- 
tions and sufferings of the worst of the penal days. 

And a little later, when the Pope had returned to Rome, and 
there were rumours that he was bargaining with England, Dan 
boldly rang out his defiance to the Pope himself If he dared to 
bargain away Ireland's traditional rights and the national rights 
of the Church. "Though I am a Catholic," he thundered, "I am 



544 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

no Papist I And I deny temporal rights to the Pope in this island." 
And prelates who, in synod assembled, had previously sent to 
Quarantotti a respectful, very firm, remonstrance, not to say 
threat, now for Pius' behoof and warning, unanimously passed 
this resolution: 

"Though we sincerely venerate the supreme Pontiff as Visible 
Head of the church we do not conceive that our apprehensions 
for the safety of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland can, or 
ought to be, removed by any determination of His Holiness, adopted 
or intended to be adopted, not only without our concurrence but 
in direct opposition to our repeated behest, and so ably supported 
by our deputy, the most Rev. Dr. Murray, who in that quality 
was more competent to inform His Holiness of the real state and 
interests of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland than any other 
with whom he is said to have consulted." 

The passion of O'Connell, the people, and the prelates had 
the desired effect. The rights of the Irish church were no longer 
ro be considered a negotiable security at Rome. 



CHAPTER LXIII 

O'CONNELL THE IDOL 

In 1 8 13 occurred the John Magee trial which lifted O'Connell 
on a mighty wave of popular favour. Magee, a Dublin Presby- 
terian of staunch Irish principle, owned The Evening Post, one of 
the only two or three journals (out of a dozen) in Dublin which 
the Government could not corrupt. When in May of '13 the Duke 
of Richmond resigned the Viceroyalty, he and his administration 
left a bad taste in the public mouth; and The Evening Post pub- 
lished a scathing article on the occasion. Of various previous ad- 
ministrations it said, *'They insulted, they oppressed, they mur- 
dered — the profligate unprincipled Westmoreland, the cold-hearted 
and cruel Camden, the artful treacherous Cornwallis, left Ireland 
more depressed and divided than they found her. They increased 
coercion and corruption, and uniformly employed them against 
the liberties of the people." But bad as they were, he said, "Rich- 
mond out-matched the worst of them." 

The Government immediately instituted proceedings against 
Magee. Attorney General Saurin, a bitter, Irish-hating Orange- 
man, had charge of the prosecution. Magee engaged O'Connell 
for his chief counsel, and both sides girded themselves for the 
battle of the age. But of course Saurin held the cards, and dealt 
them unscrupulously. In choosing the jury every man who was 
suspected of the possibility of entertaining the most remote regard 
for Irish liberties, was set aside. A solidly Orange jury, every 
man of them a noted bigot, was picked. The Bench was occupied 
by Lord Chief Justice Downes, who was clay in the hands of the 
administration, and three other judges of the same quality. 

O'Connell, recognising that his clients had as much chance of 
escape from the Bench of Tory tools and the Box of bigots, as 
would a sparrow In a field of hawks, resolved to use the oppor- 
tunity, not to seek justice In a court of manifest Injustice, but to 
fire the already excited nation by pillorying the mockery of justice 
to which the British Government treated them. 

In all his career O'Connell made no more popular speech than 

545 



546 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

his pretended "defence" of Magee — and made few that had more 
far-reaching effect. Peel who had come to Ireland as Chief Sec- 
retary, and who was present in a court that was crammed and 
surrounded by masses of men who could not get near the door — 
Peel wrote to the Viceroy that O'Connell's speech was an in- 
finitely more atrocious libel upon the Government and the admin- 
istration of justice in Ireland than the gross libel which he pro- 
fessed to defend. O'Connell browbeat and insulted the jury in 
the box, and the judges on the bench, flaying the Chief Justice him- 
self more cruelly than any of them; besides arraigning, denounc- 
ing, defying, and scarifying the Government and all its works, its 
hangers-on and tools, and the whole vulture tribe which formed 
the British administration in Ireland. "I have unfeigned respect," 
he said, to the Orange jury, "for the form of Christian faith you 
profess. Would that its preaching were deeply impressed on your 
mind — that its substance rather than forms and temporal advan- 
tages appealed to you. Then should I not address you in the 
cheerless and hopeless despondency which now clouds my mind. 
I respect and venerate your religion — but I despise your preju- 
dices as much as the Attorney General has cultivated them. There 
are amongst you men of great religious zeal — of much public piety. 
Are you sincere? Do you believe what you profess? With all 
this zeal, with all this piety, is there any conscience amongst you? 
Is there any terror of violating your oaths? Be ye hypocrites, or 
does genuine religion inspire you? If you be sincere, if you have 
consciences, if your oaths can control your prejudice — then Mr. 
Magee confidently expects an acquittal. If amongst you there be 
cherished one ray of pure religion, if amongst you there glows a 
single spark of liberty, if I have alarmed the passion of religious 
liberty, or roused the spirit of political freedom in one breast 
amongst you, Mr. Magee is safe, his country is served. But if 
there be none — if you be slaves and hypocrites, he will await your 
verdict and despise It." 

With astounding audacity he taunted, mimicked, scoffed to his 
face, and whipped, the squirming Lord Chief Justice, cowering 
on the bench In his scarlet and his ermine before the inspired man 
who spoke for an outraged people. "At some future period, my 
lord," he mocked him, "some man may attain the first place on 
the Bench by the reputation, which is easily acquired, of a certain 
degree of church-wardening piety, added to a great gravity and 
maidenly decorum of manners. Such a man may reach the Bench 
— for I am putting a purely imaginary case. He may be a man 
without passions, and therefore without vices. He may, my lord, 



O'CONNELL THE IDOL 547 

be a man superfluously rich, and therefore not to be bribed with 
money, but amenable to the smile of the masters on whom he 
fawns and to whom he is partial by his prejudice. Such a man, 
inflated by flattery and bloated in his dignity, may hereafter usp 
his character for sanctity which has served to promote him, as a 
sword to hew down the struggling liberties of his country." And 
he told the jury not to stand dictation from this man. 

Saurin who, above all others, richly deserved it, he excoriated, 
lashing him till almost he yelped, and to his face branding him 
an infamous and profligate liar. 

A vivid picture of Saurin, under his castigation, was drawn by 
Dennis Scully, in an introduction which he wrote for O'Connell's 
speech, published immediately after by The Post, and distributed 
in tens of thousands: "How did you feel when Mr. O'Connell 
branded you as a libeler before the court, a calumniator in the 
face of your country, and in your beard a liar? The sweat trickled 
down Saurin's forehead," continues Scully. "His lips were as white 
as ashes, his jaws elongated, and his mouth unconsciously open, 
while the lava of the indignant orator poured around him with 
unsparing tide, and seemed absolutely to dry up and burn the 
source of respiration." 

O'Connell's speech, by most authorities reckoned his greatest 
forensic effort, set the country wild with enthusiasm — and no won- 
der, for he had bearded the lion of injustice in his very lair, and 
he had lashed him till his roars of rage were heard to the corners 
of the land. All the vultures attendant upon the Government of 
Ireland were screeching and screaming in discordant chorus, for 
the astounding brazenness of a common demagogue attacking and 
mocking all sacred things which it had hitherto been considered 
most shocking sacrilege to breathe the faintest whisper against. 
In their wrath the Government minions went so far as to try to 
have O'Connell disrobed or driven from the Bar. But for their 
petty persecutions, which went by him as the wind, O'Connell was 
repaid a thousandfold by the exuberant gratitude of a prostrate 
people arising to the knowledge that they had found, if not a de- 
liverer, at least a defender, who feared not to face and defy their 
oppressor.^ 

1 Magee was of course found guilty. He was sentenced to two years' imprison- 
ment and a heavy fine, besides having to find securities to be of good behaviour 
for seven years. He was, moreover, given another six months' imprisonment, to- 
gether with a heavy fine, for a further aggravation of his offence in publishing in 
The Evening Post after the trial a resolution from the Irishmen of Kilkenny, con- 
demnatory of judges and jury, and the whole carriage of the trial. 



548 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

And if anything was now needed to further endear O'Connell 
to the people, his duel with D'Esterre supplied it. 

D'Esterre was a retired Lieutenant in the English navy, who, 
by a most audacious bit of bravery, had escaped hanging at the 
hands of the sailors in the Mutiny of the Nore. He was now a 
wealthy pork merchant in Dublin, and a member of the Orange 
Dublin Corporation. O'Connell, having in one of his speeches 
at the Catholic Association abused the "beggarly Corporation," 
D'Esterre, then running for High Sheriff, and so coveting popular 
favour, leapt forward as its defender. He wrote O'Connell a 
tart letter, demanding to know whether it was true, as reported 
in the press, that he had applied the opprobrious term to the Cor- 
poration. O'Connell made a characteristic reply, wherein refus- 
ing to answer yes or no to a demand impertinently made, he at 
the same time assured D'Esterre that "no terms attributed to me, 
however reproachful, can exceed the contemptuous feeling I en- 
tertain for that body.'* 

O'Connell's reply, evoking from all Dublin another hearty 
laugh at the ridiculed Corporation, brought from D'Esterre the 
announcement that he was going to chastise the man publicly. He 
went about the proceedings elaborately. With horsewhip in hand 
he set out at an advertised hour from the Mansion House, accom- 
panied by the Lord Mayor and other prominent members and 
friends of the Corporation, and followed by a crowd that swelled 
as it went, till the Four Courts was reached. 

When O'Connell, who was pleading a case in the courts, heard 
of the treat that awaited him, he doffed his gown and went out 
into the hall. But D'Esterre and his friends now considered that 
the fashionable thoroughfare of Grafton Street, through which 
the miscreant libeller always passed on his way home, would be a 
more fitting place to make a public example and point a moral. 
So they set off again, and took position on the steps of a drapery 
establishment in the popular street. All Dublin was now agog. 
Great was the crowd that jammed the thoroughfare. Beauty and 
Rank at all the windows took advantageous and comfortable posi- 
tions. And to get satisfactory view of the humiliation of the 
meddlesome demagogue whose audacity had been getting on their 
nerves, the noblest and most prominent members of the Adminis- 
tration got the choicest windows and balconies, right above the 
spot where the victim was to dance to the music of the horsewhip. 

When O'Connell heard where he was now expected to present 
himself for punishment, he took in his fist his good blackthorn, 
clapped his hat on his head with the slightly rakish tilt that was 



O'CONNELL THE IDOL 549 

his wont, and with a trusty friend on either side jauntily set out 
to overtake his Nemesis. The sublime seriousness with which 
the gentleman in Grafton Street apprehended the situation did not 
properly sink into O'Connell's soul; for, as the giant strode along, 
he lightly twirled his staff, winked at friends who here and there 
studded the crowds that lined the way, and with his jokes kept 
his companions in hearty laughter en route. 

The crowd that had followed D'Esterre was but a drop in 
the ocean to the huzzaing multitude that followed "the Coun- 
sellor" (as he was affectionately known to the populace). And 
when the cheers were heard, and the Counsellor himself and the 
head of his following were seen, at the foot of Grafton Street, 
D'Esterre rolled up his horsewhip and retired to a back parlour 
for meditation. Tory window-holders who had come to feast upon 
the final humiliation of the bad man of Ireland, had, instead, to 
endure the deep mortification of seeing him on triumphal march 
through Grafton Street, elevated into a favour before undreamt 
of. 

But of course it did not end there. Whatever might or might 
not be D'Esterre's qualifications with the horsewhip, his skill with 
the pistol was famous. After first demanding an apology from 
O'Connell, and getting instead a hearty laugh, he challenged his 
man to a pistol duel — which Major MacNamara, O'Connell's 
friend, arranged to take place at four o'clock on the afternoon of 
the day of the challenge, over the border in Kildare. Though 
both sides, with a few friends and surgeons, stole off quietly enough 
to the place of combat, the news overswept Dublin like wildfire, 
and horses, coaches, traps, gigs, and carts, every vehicle and every 
animal of burden that could be secured, flew over the road in O'Con- 
nell's wake. And when D'Esterre arrived on the field, half an 
hour late, he was surprised to find there a goodly gathering indeed 
of all sorts and conditions of Dublin people, in addition to crowds 
of Kildare country folk and a throng of citizens from the town 
of Naas, a few miles distant. 

Major MacNamara won the toss for choice of ground. The 
men were placed, the signal was given — the dropping of a hand- 
kerchief — the two fighters, with pistol points lowered, steadily 
watched each other for half a minute. Then D'Esterre stepped 
to one side, to confuse his opponent, both pistols came up simul- 
taneously, O'Connell's shot rang out first — and laid D'Esterre 
upon the ground mortally wounded. 

The Dublin Corporation and Tory ascendancy had, in the eyes 
of the tense crowd, gone down in the person of the seriously 



550 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

wounded D'Esterre — and from the top of the field where the 
country people were assembled went up a cheer of triumph that, 
it may be said, ceased not, till, twenty-four hours later, it had 
reached the four ends of Ireland. 

The man who had thrown the Old Man of the Sea, the aris- 
tocratic incubus, off the shoulders of the Catholic Association, who 
had then made the creatures of the administration yelp under his 
lash, and made the creatures' masters tremble, had compelled the 
hierarchy to the side of their people and broken the intrigues of 
Rome, and had finally overthrown hated privilege in the person 
of the champion of the most bitterly anti-Irish Orange body that 
Ireland knew, was now truly the people's Dan! 



CHAPTER LXIV 

CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION 

O'CoNNELL now had complete control of the national mind. And 
his voice was the voice of Ireland. The unquestioning faith of his 
multitudinous following put in his hands a power which he un- 
sparingly wielded to work out the people's emancipation. 

And to that end he spared himself not — either physically or 
morally, it might be specified. For when George IV of Britain 
came to visit Ireland in 1821, the popular leader, in anxiety to 
attain his great end, abased himself and through himself the na- 
tion. The abasement was not the less humiliating to Ireland even 
when we admit that the servile homage which he did George was 
as much the genuine homage of one who had an almost supersti- 
tious reverence for royalty, as it was the blarney of the Prince of 
Blarney. 

The man's ever-amazing veneration and love for the royal rep- 
resentative of that Empire which trod upon his nation's neck, and 
kept himself and his fellows in servitude, will be treated of later 
on. Sufficient to say now that to the generations since this has 
seemed almost an enigma in O'Connell's nature. But the blarney 
Dan always considered a worthy and legitimate instrument, as it 
was an effective one, for attaining a good end. 

The debauch of debasement in which O'Connell revelled be- 
fore George was all the more remarkable because nine years be- 
fore he had held him up to ridicule and opprobrium when, as Prince 
of Wales, the royal youth had worked maliciously and effectively 
against Catholic relief. The Catholic Board, under O'Connell's 
direction of course, passed the celebrated "witchery" resolution, 
which (between the lines) gave to the scandal-mongering multi- 
tude the tid-bit that it was a bigoted anti-Catholic mistress who 
had compelled the Prince's anti-Irish attitude. The resolution, 
and O'Connell's flippant treatment of his quasi-secret heart en- 
tanglement, had envenomed George against the Irish leader. This 
well-known fact made all the more strange the leader's effusively 
enthusiastic humility now. To cap the absurdity, O'Connell was 
not more delighted at lavishing servile homage upon his royal 
master than the royal master himself was childishly delighted to 
receive it. 

551 



5S2 THF STORY OF THF IRISH RACF 

O'Connell, in organising the reception, so workeci upon his 
faithful people with his lavish eloquence that, arising out to wel 
come George with wild delight, thev seethed with enthusiasm dur- 
ing every day of his stay. All dissensions of Orange and Green 
were drowned in the great draught of loyalty that both parties 
now quaffed. Royal blue, the blend of the two parties' colours, 
was by O'Connell's direction, sported by all. The climax was 
reached when at Dunleary (whose ancient name wa« that day 
dropped in favour of the glorious new one of Kingstown) O'Con- 
nell, on bended knee, presented George with a laurel crown, and 
the pledge of the nation's eternal gratitude and loyalty. George 
shook the hand of the Great Dan right cordially, and, in the lan- 
guage of The London Times correspondent, "noticed Mr. O'Con- 
nell in the most marked and condescending manner!" To the 
cheering crowds the king said in a voice almost broken with emo- 
tion, "May God Almighty bless you all until we meet again." 
And on the deck of his ship, when it started, he waved his white 
hand to the adoring ones, crying: "Farewell, my beloved Irish 
subjects!" 

O'Connell, in his joy at discovering the extraordinary devotion 
which flowed between British royalty and Irish subjects, proposed 
the erection of an Irish royal residence, offering a subscription of 
twenty guineas a year from himself. And to commemorate the 
occasion of the discovery, and the man, he asked the select of 
Dublin, both Green and Orange, to form a Royal Georgian Club, 
the members of which, sporting rosettes of blue, should dine six 
times a year, and at the festive board help one another to recall 
the happy memories of their beloved king's visit. 

So touched was George with his reception by his "beloved Irish 
subjects," that he bestowed on Lord Fingall, the ranking Catholic 
layman, the Order of St. Patrick. And immediately after his re- 
turn to England he sent to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland a 
message of gratitude, and hope for the bright future of his Irish 
people — which assured O'Connell and his followers, if assurance 
were needed, that their fondest hopes for religious freedom would 
now at length be satisfied. 

But they had still a weary way to go to their religious free- 
dom, many an arduous hill to climb, and many a furious battle to 
fight, before the goal was won. And it was destined that in the 
agony of the fight the rueful Dan should groan: "I am sorry 
to say that the greatest enemy of the people of Ireland is his most 
sacred majesty!" 

It is true that in '21 the English House of Commons passed 



CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION 553 

the Catholic Relief Bill which, while proposing to make Catholics 
eligible for Parliament and for offices under the Crown was again 
saddled with the impossible veto, and with another equally un- 
acceptable condition, namely, that the Roman Catholic clergy should 
take oath to elect only bishops who were loyal to the British Crown. 
O'Connell, who cursed it as worse than all the penal statutes, fought 
this Bill with all his power — and the priests in a solid body backed 
him. But, anyhow, the Lords who could not stomach such con- 
cession to the Irish, threw it out — and saved Ireland the trouble 
of rebelling against it. 

O'Connell entering into negotiation with Lord Lieutenant Wel- 
lesley — specially sent over to soothe Catholic feeling — agreed to 
a compromise form of veto, whereby the questioned loyalty of any 
man chosen for a bishopric should be investigated and decided 
upon by two bishops. But as the Government absolutely refused 
to entertain this proposition, O'Connell had to start from the be- 
ginning again. 

He found it a particularly good time for agitation because it 
was a particularly bad time for the country. The year '22 and 
again '23 brought with them much want and hardship to the na- 
tion. There was a famine; the French Wars had ended, and a 
period of greatly inflated prices intensely aggravated the other 
woes under which the people laboured. The secret society of the 
Ribbonmen, which terrorised profiteers, bad landlords, Govern- 
ment officials, and all enemies of the people, helped to develop 
and swell the unrest throughout the Island. And the Government 
was embarrassingly trying to cope with a difficult situation. It 
was the right moment for organising the mass of the people and 
giving them a lead. Richard Lalor Shiel, orator and Catholic 
leader, who had differed with and separated from O'Connell, now 
consented to join forces with him. So O'Connell founded a new 
Catholic Association and resolving to bring into pohtics a new 
great power that had never before been systematically enlisted, 
namely, the priests, organised the Association by parishes with 
the priest in each case as natural leader. To provide the sinews 
for the fight a Catholic rent was established, one penny per month 
per man — to be lifted at the chapel gate on the first Sunday of 
each month — which small subscription from a vast number of 
people soon supplied the Catholic Association with a steady In- 
come of more than a thousand pounds a week. So, in a short time 
the country was more thoroughly organised than It had ever been 
before. The Association, too, was more virile and determined 
in its demands. Strange to say the triumphs of the South Amer- 



554 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

ican Revolutionaries under Bolivar — to whom Ireland had con- 
tributed an Irish brigade, O'Connell's son Morgan one of its of- 
ficers — and even also the triumphs of the Greeks over their Turk- 
ish enslavers, enthused and emboldened the people. And O'Con- 
nell, most loyal of men, grew belligerent — in his speeches at least. 
"If the Irish be driven to desperation," he rang out, "they may 
wish for a new Bolivar to arise who will call forth the spirit of 
the South Americans, the spirit, too, of the Greeks, to animate 
the people of Ireland." And the threat was applauded from sea 
to sea. So dangerous became the people's attitude that the Eng- 
lish Government was forced to take a decisive step. The Catholic 
Association was suppressed, and an Emancipation Bill brought in. 

The speech of one of the very liberal-minded Parliamentarians, 
Plunkett, on the suppression of the Association, illuminates to us 
the liberality of the British Constitution as interpreted for Ire- 
land. "An Association assuming to represent the people," said 
Plunkett, "and in that capacity to bring about a reform of church 
and state is directly opposed to the British Constitution. . . . We 
deny that any portion of the subjects of this realm have the right 
to give up their suffrages to others — the right to select persons to 
speak their sentiments, debate their grievances and devise methods 
for their removal, those persons (the committee of the Catholic 
Association) not being recognised by law. That is the privilege 
alone of the Commons of the United Kingdom." And the re- 
former, Channing, endorsed these sentiments ! 

This Emancipation Bill, of 1825, omitted the veto; but in- 
stead there were attached to it two conditions, named the "wings" 
— that were to carry it through. They were — payment of priests, 
and the disfranchisement of the forty shilling free-holders. Arch- 
bishops were to be paid fifteen hundred pounds per year, bishops 
a thousand pounds, parish priests two hundred pounds, and curates 
sixty pounds. This of course was the bribe that would secure 
their loyalty to the British connection for all time. O'Connell 
found himself willing to compromise and accept these conditions, 
but priests and people rebelled — and Mahomet had to come to 
the mountain. 

The Bill passed the House of Commons — and in all prob- 
ability the House of Lords would have felt compelled to accept it, 
but that the Duke of York, brother to George IV, came before 
them, threatened, stormed, implored, entreated, and even wept 
at the prospect of their becoming traitors to the Established reli- 
gion, to the crown, and to God, truckling with, bribing, and sub- 
sidising Iniquity. The Lords, deeply moved, and emboldened by 



CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION 555 

the fierce harangue, threw out the Bill. An anti-Catholic wave 
again overswept Britain, on the crest of which rode the hero of 
York, the saviour of his nation and religion. The Parliament 
dissolved in a tumult. A general election followed, in which, once 
more, no-popery carried the day. And a bitterly anti-Papist Gov- 
ernment took up the reins in England. 

O'Connell, nothing daunted, started to build anew. When 
the Catholic Association was suppressed, he penned a valedictory, 
wherein, still strong with irrepressible loyalty, he urged upon the 
people "attachment to the British Constitution, and , unqualified 
loyalty to the king!" But as he always loved to show defiance to 
illegal laws — in a legal manner, however — he, to replace the sup- 
pressed Catholic Association now founded the New Catholic As- 
sociation, "for the purpose of public and private charity and such 
other purposes as are not forbidden by the statute of George IV, 
cap. 4." And by the simple device of the slightest change of name, 
and the definite statement of purposes not forbidden by the recent 
Suppression Act, he quickly had his agitation going in as full blast 
as if the British Imperial Parliament had only winked at it. And 
the intensity of the anti-popery agitation in England, and the suc- 
cess of the anti-popery party there, instead of dampening the ar- 
dour of the people, gave fresh vigour to the fight. 

Though the general election in England went very happily 
for the no-popery party, the new no-popery Government was 
frightened to discover that the election in Ireland had gone en- 
tirely the other way. The mighty power of combined priests and 
people was taking form, and the Irish nation now realised the 
solidity of their power more surely and more boldly than ever 
before. 

Lecky says that this election of '26 won Emancipation. It 
certainly gave the Government pause, and prepared them for a 
salutary change of mind. 

But with far more force, it can be said that Emancipation was 
won by the epoch-making Clare election. That was the first truly 
golden milestone met by the Irish people upon their weary march 
from the century's beginning. The Clare election was to Ireland 
a joyful surprise, and a fearful one to England. 

It will be recalled that Catholics were debarred from sitting 
in Parliament. Every member taking the oath had to swear to 
his conviction that "the Sacrifice of the Mass and the invocation 
of the Virgin Mary and other saints, as now practised in the 
Church of Rome, are infamous and idolatrous," Now, in 1828 a 
Parliamentary vacancy was created in County Clare, by reason 



556 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

of the member, Fitzgerald (a supporter of Emancipation), tak- 
ing office under the Government. Fitzgerald had no doubt what- 
soever of his re-election for Clare. It was, like many anotlier, a 
family seat. It had been his father's before him, and was now 
his. But since he took office under Government it was decided by 
the Association that Fitzgerald should be opposed. 

O'Connell was trying to pick out a strong, desirable and re- 
liable candidate, when there was made to him the startling sug- 
gestion, "Why not stand for Clare, yourself?" The audacity of 
the idea first took him aback. Then he smiled at it, and finally, 
seized by bold resolve, electrified his friends by declaring: "I'll 
do it." The news electrified Dublin within an hour, and Clare 
and all Ireland, within twenty-four hours, it was the most auda- 
cious resolve of the generation. 

It was then the middle of the week. O'Connell was pleading 
in the Dublin Four Courts most important cases with which he 
could not get through before the week's end. The nomination was 
to take place in Ennis, the capital of Clare, on the following Mon- 
day, and the election began on Tuesday. A party of O'Connell's 
ablest and most eloquent friends, including Tom Steele (his Head 
Pacificator), Major MacNamara (his second at the D'Esterre 
duel), and Father Tom MacGuire, the famous controversialist 
from County Leitrim, were at once rushed off to the seat of war. 
O'Connell was to follow when he could. 

It was the afternoon of Saturday when O'Connell got through 
with his cases. He slammed his papers into his bag, threw aside 
his wig and gown, rushed out of the Four Courts, and sprang into 
a waiting coach, at which four impatient horses were straining — 
and amid the huzzas of a throng that had gathered to shower 
blessings on him, was tearing along the way to Ennis. 

Speeding across Ireland during all of that night and of the 
next day, the champion was cheered by the splendid reception ac- 
corded him at every important point; in every town and village 
masses of men and women waited up to hail the bold chieftain, 
and to speed him forward with shouts of encouragement. Crowds 
were gathered at cross-roads, and knots at little cabins, all of 
whom took up and passed along the tremendous cheer which be- 
fore his flying carriage and behind it, rolled all the long way in 
accompaniment. Ahead of him, behind, and alongside, ran swift- 
footed men and boys with blazing torches, lighting the way for 
him and for Ireland's triumph. In some places bodies of men on 
horseback, spur at heel, and crouched in their saddles, lined the 
way, awaiting to dash out with the flying coach of the champion, 



CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION 557 

as guards of honour; and ere their horses tired down, other wait- 
ing ones on horses fresh sprang out to do their part. 

It was two o'clock on Monday morning when O'Connell's 
coach dashed into Ennis, which, blazing with lights, had its streets 
even at that hour jammed with the wildly joyous, and frantically 
cheering, multitude. 

O'Connell and Fitzgerald were that day nominated. And, on 
Tuesday morning began the tug of war. The crux of the situa- 
tion lay in the voting of the forty shilling freeholders. These 
men had been technically given votes which were really meant as 
endowment to their landlords. No sane politician ever thought 
that they would dare exercise choice as to the candidate for whom 
their vote would be cast. They had always voted in platoons un~ 
der the landlord's orders. Only, in the recent general election, 
for the first time in their existence, the Forties as they were called, 
had showed unmistakable signs of revolt in places where their 
landlords were supporters of the unpopular candidate. 

But in this great Clare election, in which every landlord stood 
behind Fitzgerald, the Forties finally and completely broke the 
shackles of tradition and landlord control, and went cheering to 
the polls for O'Connell. Exciting was the scene when they came 
into Ennis in bodies, sometimes openly proclaiming their new free- 
dom, sometimes seemingly submissive and demure under leader- 
ship of their landlord, and herded by his bailiffs and understrap- 
pers. But when the suitable moment arrived these demure ones, 
breaking away, rent the skies with shouts for O'Connell, and 
rushed to the poll, for the first time in their lives to vote as their 
hearts prompted. The priests of Clare played a prominent part. 
Their sermons on Sunday had been Impassioned appeals and heart- 
reaching exhortations to their congregations to quit their landlords 
for their God, and vote for O'Connell and Catholic Emancipa- 
tion. Where they succeeded in driving out of the hearts of their 
flock the terror of the landlord, they headed their flocks to Ennis. 
In cases where the landlord, still retaining his hold, led in his pla- 
toon of voters, they were met at the town's entrance by priests in- 
spired with holy zeal, who, with crucifix held aloft, barred the 
way and in torrential eloquence urged the people by the suffer- 
ings of Him who died for man not to play traitor to their faith in 
this supreme hour. And the embittered, deserted, landlord often 
had to stand aside and curse, as he beheld his tenants burst their 
bonds, and with great shout follow their priest to the polling booth. 
The tens of thousands who thronged there that week not only 
filled the streets and the houses but encamped in the meadows, 



558 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

and along the roadside, for miles around. There was no drink- 
ing, there was no fighting; there was no disorder. The people 
had been put on a vow most sacred to bring no disgrace on the 
cause, but conduct themselves with the decorum that they would 
at church. And in the face of opportunity and provocation before 
unequalled, they amazed friend and enemy by exercising a restraint 
that was marvellous. The anecdote is told of Sheedy MacNamara, 
a man who would welcome a fight more warmly than a fortune, 
being openly and most provokingly insulted in the streets by one 
of the enemy, and, instead of knocking the fellow down, taking 
him gently aside and saying to him in the sweetest way: "I have 
just one little pig at home, and I'll promise you the price of it if 
you'Jl repeat them same words to me the day after the election." 

At the end of the first day of the polling O'Connell was a 
little ahead of Fitzgerald. On Wednesday night his lead was 
larger, and his majority went on progressing, during Thursday 
and Friday. Till on Saturday night, when the poll closed, he 
was, by two to one, elected member of Parliament for Clare. 

A few months before the Clare election the English Prime 
Minister, Sir Robert Peel, had emphatically declared in the House 
of Commons : "I can not consent to widen the door of political 
power to Roman Catholics. I can not consent to give them the 
same civil rights and privileges as those possessed by their Prot- 
estant fellow-countrymen." But, a few months after the Clare 
election he prepared to pipe to another tune: "In the course of 
the last six months England, at peace with the world, has had five- 
sixths of her infantry force occupied in maintaining peace in Ire- 
land. I consider such a state of things much worse than rebel- 
lion." And the king's speech in Parliament in the February fol- 
lowing asked his faithful Commons to consider the unrest in Ire- 
land and review the laws causing it. County Clare had conquered 
England. 

Says Lecky: "The population was in ferment, the army itself 
was affected. The influence of the landed aristocracy gave way. 
Ministers, feeling further resistance hopeless, brought in the Eman- 
cipation Bill confessedly because to withhold it might kindle a 
rebellion extending over the length and the breadth of the land." 

Lord Wellington, in the Lords, excused his promoting the 
Bill on the ground that it might be less evil than civil war, which, 
if the bill were refused, would surely be precipitated in Ireland, 
Fear of the consequences, not the injustice, was the only reason 
offered by any of its English promoters, for pressing the measure. 

The Emancipation Bill was brought in — and passed — but not 



CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION 559 

without fierce opposition. The Lords also felt constrained to allow 
it — though one can easily imagine the bitter aversion with which 
they did so. The Duke of Brunswick (brother to King George) 
and Lord Eldon, the most violent opponents of the measure, then 
went to the king, to entreat, threaten, and coerce him into refusing 
his signature. And they succeeded in breaking him down so that 
when the Government leaders. Peel of the Commons, and Welling- 
ton of the Lords, brought him the Bill, he would not sign it. They 
argued with him for five hours, but with no avail. He alternately 
stormed and wept. They handed him their resignations. He 
called them back, kissed them, and cried again. When he found 
himself unable to form a new ministry, he sent again for Welling- 
ton and Peel, signed the bill, and in a fit of rage smashed on the 
floor the pen with which he had, as he believed, betrayed his trust 
to God and the English people.^ 

In the House of Lords the Archbishop of Canterbury moved 
to reject the bill, and was seconded by the Protestant Primate of 
Ireland, Beresford. Every bishop except one, Dr. Lloyd of Ox- 
ford, vofced against Catholics getting citizen rights In their own 
country. 

The Emancipation Bill was passed, the commonest citizen 
rights from which Irish people had hitherto been debarred, be- 
cause they were heretics and idolaters, were now permitted by 
law. And civil oflices from which they had been, for their crime, 
shut out, were supposedly thrown open to them. Technically 
these reforms were Instituted by the passing of the Act — "The 
manacles," said O'Connell, "are riven from our limbs after we 
had gone near to breaking them on the heads of our enemies." 
But practically speaking Irish Catholics continued, for many de- 
cades after, to labour under their former disability. And in many 
parts of Ireland, even down to a short generation ago, they were 
in practice still shut out from all offices except the most menial. 

1 Three months after, when King George at one of his levees caught sight of 
O'Connell, he muttered, "There is O'Connell, G d the scoundrel I" 

O'Connell did not present himself in the House of Commons until the Bill had 
been passed — though not yet gone into effect. Every member v^ras in his place on 
the day and at the hour that O'Connell was expected. In the Strangers' Gallery 
were crowded the nobility of England and the diplomats of many foreign countries. 
When the objectionable oath was presented to O'Connell he of course refused to 
take it He was told by the speakers that under the circumstances he could not 
take his seat, and he marched out of the House of Commons again — and went back 
to Clare where he was re-elected without opposition. 

When the Emancipation Act went into effect, it of course eliminated the objec- 
tionable oath ; and the several Catholics who were returned from various parts of 
Ireland at the next general election, were permitted to seat themselves in the House. 



i 



CHAPTER LXV 

o'connell's power and popularity 

Though it was in his character as poHtical leader that he was 
greatest to his people, it was undeniably in his capacity as lawyer 
that Daniel O'Connell — "Dan" as they affectionately called him 
— got nearest to their hearts. They who had always been con- 
demned before they were heard, were accorded human rights in 
the courts of law after O'Connell had successfully stormed those 
citadels of injustice. To the regular Crown prosecutors he made 
his name a name of fear. And indeed it was not much less a ter- 
ror to those irregular Crown prosecutors who, on the Bench, mas- 
queraded as judges. 

He was one of the most powerful pleaders that the Bar ever 
knew. His enemy. Peel, once said that if he wanted an efficient 
and eloquent advocate, he would readily barter all the best of the 
English Bar for the Irish O'Connell. In conducting an important 
case he called into play all of his wonderful faculties. He went 
from grave to gay, from the sublime to the ludicrous. Pie played 
with ease upon every human feeling. He carried away the judge, 
the jury, the witness that he was handling, and the very prisoner 
himself in the dock. He could in a few minutes' cross-examination 
tear the ablest witness to shreds, and show the pitying court the 
paltry stuff he was made of. He might at first play his man, go 
with him, blarney him, flatter him, convince him that Dan O'Con- 
nell had become his most enthusiastic admirer and dearest friend. 
And when he had thus taken him off his guard, led him by hand 
into a trap, the Counsellor (another of the people's titles for 
O'Connell) would come down upon his man with a crash that 
Stunned and shattered him and left him a piteous victim at the 
great cross-examiner's feet. And to judge and jury and the whole 
court it was now the witness, not the prisoner in the dock, who 
was on trial for his life. 

He had a most disconcerting way of passing pungent viva voce 
remarks, when the prosecuting lawyer was making his speech or 
examining his witness, which provoked the prosecutor to wrath, 

560 



O'CONNELL'S POWER AND POPULARITY 561 

lost him his train of thought, and often spoiled him his case. If 
the judges' protection was invoked by the enraged prosecutor, the 
wise potentate on the Bench usually considered discretion the bet- 
ter part of valour. Baron McClellan trying a case in a Kerry 
court was annoyed to find O'Connell interjecting remarks in a case 
in which he felt his interest enlisted. "Mr. O'Connell," asked Mc- 
Clellan, cuttingly, *'are you engaged in this case?" "I am not, my 
lord, but I shall be." "When I was at the Bar," said the judge, 
in his most crushing manner, "it was not my habit to anticipate 
briefs." "When your lordship was at the Bar," answered O'Con- 
nell, "I never chose you for a model. And now that you are on 
the Bench I shall not submit to your dictation." 

Once when O'Connell found himself in possession of abso- 
lutely no case, in defending a prisoner who was on trial for his 
life before a newly-appointed, timid, and scrupulous judge, O'Con- 
nell deHberately proceeded with a Hne of argument which — as he 
intended — compelled reprimands from the judge again and again; 
then giving way to an outburst of apparently terrible indignation, 
he said: "Since your lordship will not permit me to defend this 
man whose life is in the balance, I withdraw from the case, and 
throw the prisoner upon the tender mercies of an evidently hostile 
court. If he is condemned, on your head, my lord, be his blood." 
Then he slammed down his brief and left the court. The fright- 
ened judge, finding himself compelled to act the part of Counsel 
for the defence, cross-examined for the prisoner, charged for him 
'—and sent him out of the court a free man. 

The Doneraile conspiracy case, in October, 1829, memorably 
exemplified O'Connell's power. The Government, making a grand 
sweep at Doneraile, gathered in many men charged with conspiracy 
to murder savage landlords and unjust magistrates. The greatest 
importance was attached to the case. A Special Commission was 
sent down to Cork to try the conspirators. "Long John" Do- 
herty, the Solicitor-General, a bitterly anti-popular official, went 
down himself to prosecute. They were to be tried In batches. 
The first four were put forward, found guilty, and sentenced to 
be hanged. At this result the remaining prisoners and their as- 
sembled friends were thrown into panic. It was then Saturday 
afternoon. The next batch would be put on trial on Monday morn- 
ing. A cry went up for Dan O'Connell. Dan was then resting 
at Derrynane — ninety Irish miles away. That he could be got to 
the trial in time, even if he consented to come, was hardly possible. 
But In desperation the forlorn hope must be chanced. A messen- 
ger, William Burke, set out from Cork on a fast horse, on Satur- 



562 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

day evening, and, after a marvellous night ride, on Sunday fore- 
noon clattered into Derrynane and threw himself from his horse 
at O'Connell's door. The Counsellor, when he learnt the circum- 
stances, said: 'Til go." 

He rushed Burke off ahead to have fresh horses awaiting him 
at certain points, and to carry to the distracted ones the news of 
his coming. O'Connell started in the afternoon, and all that eve- 
ning and all that night was galloping over the rough, steep, and 
broken mountain-roads of Kerry, and then over the plains and 
hills of Cork, without pausing to eat, drink, or sleep. At ten 
o'clock on Monday morning, one hour after the court-sitting be- 
gan, the waiting throngs on the streets of Cork were electrified 
by the cry, "The Counsellor's coming!" The wild exultation which 
found voice from the waiting ones away beyond the suburbs rolled 
onward to the city's heart gathering volume as it went, till it 
rocked the court-house, bringing dismay to the prosecutors there, 
and genuine displeasure to the judges — all of whom too well knew 
what that terrific cheer meant. Through the frantically huzzaing 
lines of people O'Connell tore onward, to the courthouse, where, 
as he jumped to the ground his horse fell dead! 

Attired as he was, and mud-spattered, he tore into the hall 
where the State trial was staged, and, to the scowling prosecutors 
and the frowning judges, announcing, "I appear for the prisoners 
in the dock," sat down at the Counsel's table to a repast of bread 
and milk, that had been rushed in after him. While he hastily 
bolted his single meal lawyers for the defence were pouring into 
his ear the points of the case. He gave one ear to them and one to 
Prosecutor "Long John" who was then on his feet addressing the 
court. Now and then, between mouthfuls, he would emit a short 
sharp comment, objection, or rebuke to the sorely-provoked Do- 
herty — spoiling half-a-dozen of the fellow's finest points, by rap- 
ping out on the heels of them, "That's not law!" And every 
time, the judges had to uphold O'Connell's objection. 

"The allegation is made upon false facts," said Doherty, en- 
lightening the Judges upon a particular point. "Never was such 
a thing as a false fact," snapped O'Connell. "There are false 
facts and false men too," sneered the enraged Doherty. "Yes, 
your case and yourself," retorted O'Connell. 

When Doherty, with his temper and his arguments shattered, 
sat down, O'Connell, now both refreshed and informed, got to 
his feet and began his case. The prosecution pursued in this case 
the selfsame line of action, produced the selfsame witnesses, and 
got the selfsame "proofs" against this second batch of prisoners 



O'CONNELL'S POWER AND POPULARITY 563 

as against the first — but O'Connell's defence made such breaches 
in the prosecution's structure that the jury disagreed. And when 
the third batch was tried he had so far progressed as to procure 
a quick verdict of "Not Guilty." The prosecution was broken. 
They would go no further with the trial; all remaining prisoners 
were released; the condemned ones were reprieved — and a host 
of men who had looked into the noose that awaited their necks, 
walked home amid cheering crowds, free men. 

O'Connell had some good stories to tell of some of the char- 
acters whom his genius had freed. There was a robber whom he 
defended on three different occasions — and for whom he won out 
every time. On the occasion of the third victory, the fellow grate- 
fully grasped his hand, exclaiming: "May the Lord long spare 
you to me. Counsellor O'Connell." And a cow-stealer whom he 
had defended repaid him with a tip on how to extract the maxi- 
mum of profit from a cow raid. "When your Honour goes to 
stale cows," the expert confided to him, "always choose the worst 
night that falls from the heavens, because then there'll be no one 
about to see you. And, on such a night, too, when you reach the 
field, you'll aisily know the fat ones. Don't take any of the 
scrawny bunch, your honour, that shoulder one another in the 
shelter of the wall. They are the craitures that have nothing on 
their bones but a hide. Take them that stands out in the open, 
disregardless of the storm, for they're the fat on^^s that has noth- 
ing to fear from wind, rain, or hail." 

For fifteen years before Emancipation, O'Connell was, it 
seemed, the greatest man in Ireland. When he achieved Eman- 
cipation he became one of the greatest men in Europe — in the 
world. Such was his universal fame then that there was nothing 
surprising about his getting a letter from America beginning 
"Awful Sir" — or in the German students' answering the exam- 
ination question: "Who is Daniel O'Connell?" with the reply: 
"He is the man who discovered Ireland." In the election of a 
king for the newly-formed Belgian nation three votes were given 
for "le Grand O'Connell." And ten years afterward, in the fer- 
vour of the Repeal movement, Dan himself said to his friend, 
O'Neill Daunt, "If the Belgian election had waited till now, I 
don't doubt but I would have run old Leopold close." In '35 he 
was flattered to find himself invited to France to defend the Lyons 
Conspirators — which signal honour he had to refuse for want of 
fluency in French. His friend Daunt records the pronouncement 
of a London stockbroker who was no way partial to O'Connell 
or his principles: "Your Daniel O'Connell is one of the Great 



564 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Powers of Europe. His movements have a sensible effect on the 
Funds." 

All over the Continent he was now revered as the greatest 
leader of Catholic democracy that the world ever knew. His won- 
derful Continental popularity was well pictured by Lord Macaulay 
speaking (some years later) in the English House of Commons: 
"The position which Mr. O'Connell holds in the eyes of his fel- 
low-countrymen is a position such as no popular leader in the 
whole history of mankind ever attained. You are mistaken if you 
imagine that the interest with which he is regarded is confined only 
to these islands. Go where you will on the Continent, visit any 
coffee-house, dine at any public table, embark upon any steam-boat, 
enter any conveyance — from the moment your accent shows you 
to be an Englishman, the very first question asked by your com- 
panions, be they what they may — physicians, advocates, merchants, 
manufacturers, or peasants of the class who are like your yeoman 
in this country — is 'What will be done with O'Connell?' " And 
his greatness thus inspired Bulwer Lytton's muse : 

"Once to my sight the giant thus was given, 
Walled by wide air and roofed by boundless heaven ; 
Beneath his feet the human ocean lay, 
And wave on wave flowed into space away. 
Methought no clarion could have sent this sound 
E'en to the centre of the hosts around* 
And, as I thought, rose a sonorous swell, 
As from some church tower s\vings the silvery bell ; 
Aloft and clear from airy tide to tide, 
It glided easy as a bird may glide. 
To the last verge of that vast audience sent, 
It played with each wild passion as it went: 
Now stirred the uproar, now the murmurs stilled, 
And sobs or laughter answered as it willed. 
Then did I know what spell of infinite. choice 
To rouse or lull has the sweet human voice. 
Then did I learn to seize the sudden clue 
To the grand troublous life antique — to view, 
Under the rockstand of Demosthenes, 
Unstable Athens heave her noisy seas." 

After having first v^Iewed the champion at close range — for 
he helped to fight him — Gladstone, later looking back at him in 
far perspective, pronounced O'Connell one of the greatest popu- 
lar leaders the world had ever known. 

But it was in the hearts of the Irish people that Dan's great- 



O'CONNELL'S POWER AND POPULARITY 565 

ness was most truly appreciated, and admiration of him grew 
akin to worship* 

In the years when he was in his climax his word was to the 
Irish people electric, and his power was invincible. With joyous 
thrill these long-suffering ones felt that when Dan spoke there 
was fearful trembling in the seats of the mighty. In him the na- 
tion that was dumb had found a voice. The despised had found 
a champion and the cruelly wronged an avenger. He was to them 
in the ranks of the gods. 

And what less exalted position should an oppressed people 
give to him who for the first time In man's memory, stood up in 
the court of law, the 'court of Injustice, and made the most awful 
of the judges, who dispensed Injustice there, cower — faced those 
judges' Masters too in their own Parliament and made them 
writhe ! 

It Is not to be wondered at, then, that O'Connell should, more 
than once. In his speech In defence of a prisoner, get the jury in 
the box cheering. An Englishman In a party accompanying O'Con- 
nell over a mountain-road was shocked to behold the mourners 
at a funeral which they met, burst out cheering for their uncrowned 
king. "Arrah, man, dear," O'Connell reassured him, "sure the 
corpse in the coffin would have joined in the cheer himself, if he 
could only have found his voice." An old crippled beggar woman 
when her hand was shaken by the great Dan, threw her crutch 
in the air and gave a bound and a whoop that would do credit to 
a mountain goat. O'Neill Daunt tells how, at a reception to 
O'Connell in Limerick, where a hundred thousand jubilant men 
were throwing their hats in the air, an enthusiastic poor woman 
tossed up her child. 

So affected even were the English by Dan's greatness that (as 
told by himself) two maiden ladles who were at one time his 
hostesses In England insisted every night before retiring, on stand- 
ing up to sing a hymn in his praise to the air of "God Save the 
King." 

After Emancipation was won O'Connell abandoned his law 
practice to devote himself entirely to the people's cause. To com- 
pensate him, the famous Tribute was then started — a popular 
nation-wide subscription which gave him an average income of 
thirteen thousand pounds a year. Though In its first year, in spe- 
cial gratitude to the man who had wrung the Emancipation Act 
from England, fifty thousand pounds were subscribed. 

His law practice had been netting him about eight thousand 
pounds per year. If, foregoing Ireland's cause, he had given all 



S66 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

his time to the law he might have doubled that sum. It was the 
taking of the Tribute, every penny of which was richly earned, 
and every penny of which in truth he well spent, that won for him 
from his unloving English friends the title of the Big Beggarman. 
It was sometimes amusing to him to hear the scornful phrase used 
by some English politician who, if he had had half O'Connell's 
talent, would not have lent it to any cause, good or bad, for double 
the sum. A few of their broader-minded ones, however, frankly 
admitted that it was a noble honorarium, nobly earned, nobly 
given, and nobly accepted. So large was the scale on which O'Con- 
nell had to live, and so great his expenses, that the Tribute to- 
gether with the income of his estate was seldom sufficient to keep 
him out of debt. 



CHAPTER LXVI 

THROUGH THE 'THIRTIES 

When Emancipation was won, Repeal of the false and corruptly- 
purchased "Union" of Ireland with England was the great issue 
that the Leader started. It had always been mulling in his mind. 
Indeed there were times when he would have preferred to accept 
repeal of the Union in preference to repeal of the Penal Laws. 
He stated that at the time of the Union, and the wish haunted his 
heart every year after. 

In 1 8 10 the grand jurors of Dublin, all of them of course 
Tories and British-Irish, tried to start the Repeal movement. But 
the promises of British politicians who dangled before their eyes 
the bait of Emancipation, kept the Catholic party from joining 
their Protestant fellow-countrymen on this occasion. Now that 
Dan was free to throw himself into the repeal movement, and the 
Catholics almost to a man were behind him, no support could be 
got from their Protestant fellow-countrymen. There were two 
reasons for this — the fierceness of the fight for Emancipation had 
embittered the Protestants against their Catholic fellows; and be- 
sides all the ofiices and patronage of the country which had been 
securely theirs in pre-Emancipation days were getting shaky in 
their grasp now that Catholic disabilities were by law removed. 
Repeal of the Union would now finally break their monopoly; 
so the overwhelming body of the Protestant population was hence- 
forth as bitterly anti-Repeal as they had formerly been anti-Union 
— and more bitterly than they had been anti-Emancipation. 

Strange to say, the famous Bishop Doyle of Limerick, dearly 
loving the people whose fearless champion he was, but curiously 
lacking the Nationalist instinct, withstood O'Connell on Repeal. 
Richard Lalor Shiel was against him, too — though this will not 
seem strange to any one who studies the many shallows of Shiel's 
nature. And it will surprise some who thought that Tom Moore 
was not a mere drav/ing-room patriot to learn that he too bitterly 
resented O'Connell's new national move, saymg that it would 
divide the upper, and madden the lower, classes. And his in- 

567 



568 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

dignatlon inspired him to write his song: "The dream of those 
days when I first saw thee, is o'er." 

The Government, not desiring to see the 'Thirties repeat the 
debacle of the 'Twenties, took, an emphatic grip on Time's fore- 
lock, and determinedly set themselves to stamp out his repeal 
agitation at its inception. When in 1830 he started his anti-Union 
Association they proclaimed it at once; and from that time for- 
ward it was an exciting race between O'Connell and the Govern- 
ment — he restarting his repeal movement under a new name each 
week, and they, close following, proclaiming it. 

He started a weekly Repeal Breakfast, and promised that if 
it was suppressed, he would have Repeal Lunches, Repeal Din- 
ners, Repeal Suppers in succession. Its next form was a General 
Association for Ireland. When that was proclaimed, he started 
A Body of Persons, in the Habit of Meeting Weekly for Break- 
fast, at a place called Holmes' Hotel. When this was proclaimed 
he had A Party Meeting for Dinner at Gray's Tavern. When it 
was proclaimed he proposed to make himself the Repeal Associa- 
tion, with an assisting council of thirty-one people. He said they 
couldn't disperse an individual by proclamation. 

But it was never a question of what the Irish Government 
could do. Whether they could or could not do a thing they would 
do it — and did it. He started his Association under the title of 
the Irish Society for Legal and Legislative Relief; after that, again 
the Anti-Union Association; then an Association of Irish Volun- 
teers for Repeal of the Union; and, succeeding that, an Associa- 
tion of Subscribers to the Parliamentary Intelligence Office. 

It was an exciting game of hide-and-seek in which he so pro- 
voked and tired the Government that at length they arrested him. 
Even then he outwitted them — for he compromised on a plea of 
guilty for technical offence against a temporary Act (the Act for 
Suppression of Illegal Societies) and contrived to have sentence 
postponed until, at the expiration of Parliament, the Act expired, 
too. 

To help the English Whigs in their great fight for Parlia- 
mentary Reform, O'Connell, much against the wish of many wise 
ones, slackened the Repeal fight, while he let the popular fight 
against tithes forge to the front. And he cast all his weight to 
the English Whigs in their Reform struggle. 

The Established (Protestant) Church was supported in Ire- 
land by the farmers of all religions paying to it tithes, a tenth of 
their products. In this way the poorer five-sixths of the Irish 



THROUGH THE THIRTIES 569 

population was mulcted to support the very rich church of the re- 
maining one-sixth. In the more Catholic parts of Ireland there 
were thousands of parishes from which the Established clergyman 
drew an enormous salary for ministering to his own family and 
the family of his sexton only. Whether his congregation was few 
or entirely non-existent, both he and his church had to be kept 
prosperous — by a people of another faith, who oftentimes had 
not meal for the mouths of their own children. In the year im- 
mediately succeeding Emancipation, the smouldering anger against 
this injustice leaped up in flame tongues, here and there. Little 
more than a year after the passing of Emancipation the yeomanry 
killed seventeen people who tried to rescue their seized cattle 
from the tithe-proctor at Bunclody in Wexford. The Govern- 
ment, after inquiry into the affair, concluded that the arms of the 
yeomanry were not effective enough for teaching a needed lesson 
to conscienceless people who could be guilty of hindering a tithe- 
proctor's purposes. So they granted them new and better equip- 
ment. 

At Carrlckshock in Kilkenny, in November of the same year, 
the people fell upon an armed force who guarded two tithe proc- 
ess-servers — and killed eighteen or twenty of them. The tithe 
war was almost getting out of hand. The Government, goaded 
by the suffering church, must make desperate efforts to suppress it. 
Twenty-five Carrickshock men were put on trial for murder at the 
Kilkenny assizes before a Special Commission sent down by Gov- 
ernment. O'Connell went down to defend them, and here gave 
another fine example of his quality, most deftly shattering the 
Government's case, by breaking, at the first going off, the chief 
prop on which it rested. At the very outset of the trial they put 
forward their leading witness, a policeman, who gave direct, clean- 
cut, and definite testimony, proving home murder against some 
of the prisoners. His evidence was so definite in the most minute 
details as to be eminently convincing to an average jury. On 
cross-examination, he proved to be a rock that O'Connell could 
not shake. Things looked dark, almost desperate for the defence, 
when there was a little note passed from the body of the court to 
Counsellor O'Connell. He glanced at the note in the most casual 
manner, and learnt from it that the witness' father was a notorious 
and convicted sheep stealer. Apparently paying little attention 
to the note, he went on mechanically asking further questions in 
such an indifferent way as indicated that the witness' evidence was 
unshakable. Before dismissing him he paid the witness a couple 



570 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

of compliments on his evidence — which put the fellow in mighty 
good humour with himself and the world. Then as the witness 
was stepping out of the box, triumphant and elated, O'Connell 
said: "Just one minute, my friend" — and in a casual way said 
to him, "I suppose you're fond of mutton." "Why, yes. Coun- 
sellor O'Connell. I wouldn't make strange with a good piece of 
mutton." "You don't happen to know any really clever sheep- 
stealers, now?" "No, I can't say that I do." "Did you ever 
know any sheep-stealers?" "I never had that pleasure." "You, 
of course, never have had any connection with any such person?" 
O'Connell spoke in an apologetic way as if he was, under com- 
pulsion, asking questions that he was ashamed to ask of a decent 
man. He led the witness on to swear over and over again, in the 
most solemn and most definite manner, that he had never known 
of, associated with, or been related to, any such disreputable per- 
son. "Then it was," says Fagan, in his Life of O'Connell, "that 
O'Connell pounced upon him. The court rang and echoed again 
with the thunders of his voice. The silent-stricken audience looked 
on with amaze at the portentous change of voice and manner which 
had taken place in the advocate, as well as in the witness; and, 
amid the hush of the multitude, the deep breathings of the pris- 
oners, and the silent, heartfelt expectations of all present, the man 
was obliged to confess that his father had been the expert sheep- 
stealer, which, on his oath, he had so solemnly denied knowing 
but a few minutes before." And that man's evidence went at 
once to the scrap-heap. 

The tithe war spread like wildfire. The people refused to 
pay the iniquitous imposition. They fought against the seizing 
of their cattle. All cows liable to be seized were branded "T" 
so that nowhere a purchaser could be found for them. Any one 
who paid was ostracised. Thousands of troops were poured into 
the country to protect the tithe proctors and process-servers. The 
Protestant clergy, unable to collect the tithes, were now in such 
real distress that the Government had to provide a Relief Fund 
for them. Many parts of Ireland were proclaimed; martial law 
was instituted; there were shootings, hangings, transportings. All 
meetings were suppressed. The Government assumed the tithe 
proctor's business, and after many marchings, countermarchings, 
and bloody conflicts, collected (out of hundreds of thousands of 
pounds due) twelve thousand pounds at a cost of fifteen thousand! 

They finally rested from an impossible task and talked com- 
promise. They suggested the reduction of the tithe by a fourth, 
and shifting it in its reduced form to the landlord's shoulders — 



THROUGH THE THIRTIES 571 

Avho should then Increase his tenants' rents in proportion. O'Con- 
nell wanted the tithe reduced two-fifths. Neither proposition went 
into effect, just then. But the Vestry Act and the Church Tem- 
poralities Act of '34 made minor reforms and economies in the 
Establishment — including the suppression of ten ornamental but 
highly lucrative bishoprics, and a tax upon the fatter livings to 
help the lean ones. The tithe-war dragged on, in varying inten- 
sity, till in '38 was passed the Act which reduced the tithe by a 
fourth, and shifted it to the landlord. As almost all landlords 
raised the rent to recoup themselves, the people still had to con- 
tinue bearing the burden of a foreign church. 

In his desire to help the English Whigs in their Reform strug- 
gle, O'Connell had put Parliamentary Reform temporarily before 
Repeal, worked for it with might and main, and with his Irish 
following finally gave the Whigs the margin of majority that car- 
ried the Reform Bill. And when the Whigs came into power in 
the new Reform Parliament of '34, their first measure was a 
Coercion Bill for Ireland! The fiercest, too, of the many such 
boons to Ireland since the century's beginning! 

Thus did the Irish leader find himself recompensed for shelv- 
ing Repeal in the interests of the W^higs. "Six hundred scoun- 
drels" was his designation of the Britishers who sat in the Re- 
form Parliament. And the king's speech, recommending Coer- 
cion, he called "a brutal and bloody speech." In his fiery fight- 
ing trim, with the forty Repeal members (Including eight mem- 
bers of his own family) which the General Election gave him 
from Ireland, he went to Westminster to try a fall with the "six 
hundred scoundrels" over the Coercion Bill. "The atrocious at- 
tempt to extinguish public liberty makes me young again," he 
wrote to Edward Dwyer, from London. He was now on the 
eve of sixty. "I feel the vigour of youth In the elastic spring of 
my hatred of tyranny." But his Reform friends overwhelmed his 
opposition, and gave a fresh turn of the screw to his suffering 
country. 

When In '31 he had been warned against abandoning Irish 
Repeal for British Parliamentary Reform, he said to the people: 
"Let no one deceive you and say that I have abandoned anti- 
Unionism. It Is false. But I am decidedly of opinion that it Is 
only in a reformed Parliament that the question can properly, 
truly, and dispassionately, be discussed." 

Yet, at the very time he said this, he had put Repeal aside to 
save his English friends. In a letter to his Whig friend, Lord 
Duncannon, In December, '31, he says: "On my arrival (in Dub- 



572 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

I'm) I found a formidable anti-Union Association completed, called 
the Trade Union, headed by a man of popular qualifications, who 
was capable of success. I took his people out of his hands, and 
not only turned them, but I can say turned the rest of the country, 
from the overpowering question of Repeal to the suitable one of 
Reform." 

Notwithstanding the Whigs' betrayal of him he returned them 
to power again after they had been thrown out, and kept them in 
power by the dependable bulk of his following. 

Throughout the 'Thirties O'Connell seemed to work in com- 
plete forgetfulness of the one big fact which the agitation of the 
'Twenties should have stamped indelibly on his mind, namely, that 
an Ireland lulled by the opiate of English friendship always proved 
to be an Ireland fooled; while an Ireland rebellious was an Ire- 
land successful. 

The Whigs, now needing his support, made formal alliance 
with him, flattered him, promised him, lured him on, gave minor 
offices to his friends, tried to tempt himself with office — an idea 
that indeed he pleasantly toyed with, but finally dismissed — and 
left him in the lurch. 

Acting under the opiate, he, in '34, called on the country to 
try a six year "experiment" — to let Repeal remain in abeyance for 
that time, and see what Ireland's good friend, the Whigs, would 
do for her. And such was the faith and the confidence of the 
people in O'Connell, that, almost without a murmur they spiked 
their own guns on the battlefield, just to prove their trust in a 
generous enemy! And the poor fools were, of course, repaid ac- 
cording to their folly. 

And during those years, the "experiment" years, Ireland got 
from the Whig Government the Poor Law Act (which O'Con- 
nell considered a curse Instead of a cure), the Tithes Act which 
added three-quarters of that impost to their rent — and on the 
strength of which complacent Dan called upon the people to cease 
their tithe agitation — an Act forbidding subletting, and an Act to 
make ejectments easy. Bishop Doyle approved of the latter two 
Acts on the ground that they would help to save Ireland from 
poverty, and he was sorry they were not enacted thirty years be- 
fore! 

It was little wonder that in the late 'Thirties the Whig-befooled 
Dan found his popularity waning, got down-hearted, depressed, 
discouraged, and in '39 made retreat in Mt. Melleray to regain 
his calm. "It mortifies but does not surprise me," he wrote to a 



THROUGH THE THIRTIES 573 

friend, "to find that I have exhausted the bounty of the Irish peo- 
ple. God help mel What shall I do?" He talked of retiring 
permanently into a monastery. 

He came out of his Mount Melleray retreat — with a mind 
much calmed — able collectedly to review his position and make his 
plans. But only a miracle could rehabilitate him. 



CHAPTER LXVII 

THE GREAT REPEAL FIGHT 

Bur the miracle happened. 

And the blessed word that evoked the miracle was Repeal ! 

When, by a fortunate inspiration, the great man boldly uttered 
again the witching word which, for six years forbidden, had been 
heard not, or only heard in whispers, it resounded from hill to 
hill to the island's uttermost corner. It seemed whisked on the 
wings of life, till a million mouths re-echoed it. A land that had 
been settling into the silence of mild despair, suddenly burst into 
a great song of hope again; and the hero who was falling from 
his pedestal, was, by this magic word, now lifted to a pinnacle 
that he had never reached before. 

In 1840 O'Connell founded the National Association of Ire- 
land for repeal. The statements of principle which he wrote were 
led in by a true O'Connell flourish of superlative loyalty, pledging 
"most dutiful and ever inviolate loyalty to our gracious and ever- 
beloved sovereign queen, Victoria, her heirs and successors for- 
ever" — and by another characteristically O'Connell flourish of 
law-worship, spiced with piety: "The total disclaiming of, and 
absence from, all physical force, violence, or breach of the law, 
or in short, any violation of the laws of man or the ordinances 
of the Eternal God whose holy name be ever blessed." The hero 
was getting his old rhetorical stride again. 

And in the intensity of his loyalty to his beloved sovereign the 
name of the Association was, in '41, improved into the Loyal Na- 
tional Repeal Association. 

The Repeal movement was undoubtedly popularised — if such 
were possible — and materially stimulated by a couple of big hap- 
penings in the Dublin Corporation in these years. In '41 was 
elected, for the first time in history, a Nationalist corporation in 
Dublin. Under the Municipal Reform Act, just obtained, the old 
Dublin Corporation, citadel of ultra-Orangelsm, was wiped out 
and replaced by one that was five-si.xths Nationalist. And to the 
frenzied delight of Dublin, and all Ireland, Dan O'Connell was 
elected the first Nationalist Lord Mayor. 

574 



THE GREAT REPEAL FIGHT 575 

So profound was the respect for Dan's sincerity and broad- 
mindedness that the few Orangemen left in the new Corporation 
stood up, in company with the Nationalist members, to do him 
honour. And Dan, in accepting the office, then said: "I pledge 
myself to this, that in my capacity as Lord Mayor no one will be 
able to discover my politics from my conduct. — In my capacity as 
a man though," he added, "I am a Repealer to my last breath." 

When, in response to the myriad cries of the multitude of citi- 
zens who surged outside the City Hall, Dan, coming to a window, 
showed himself in his robes of office, the dramatic sight of a real 
Irishman fiUing the robes of the Lord Mayor of Dublin, set the 
multitude frantic with joy. In that rare sight they saw concrete 
token that their fearfully long toil was bearing fruit; and ages of 
suffering and striving being crowned by heaven with reward. The 
rags were surely falling from the Mother's shoulders, the fetters 
from her limbs; she was coming into her own again. With lighter 
heart and more hopeful, Ireland bent to the fight for Repeal. 

The second stimulus was the great Repeal debate in the Dub- 
lin Corporation, where the new Lord Mayor made a Repeal 
speech, which, to the eager people who in every corner of the land 
devoured the report of it, was one of the most wonderful of his 
career. By overwhelming majority was carried a resolution to 
present a Repeal petition to Parliament. The great debate, from 
its first word to its last reported verbatim in all the papers, and 
carried to the farthest remote cabin In the most remote valleys of 
the Island, mightily swelled the enthusiasm with which the nation 
simmered, and multiplied the people's determination this time to 
win their goal. 

From the day of his election to the Mayoralty it felt fine to 
the people to address Dan, one of their own, as "Your Lordship" 
and "My Lord." And it was all the happier for that the rich 
expression, far from having to be said in a frightened or cowering 
fashion, could be trolled out in a hail-fellow-well-met tone — to a 
lordship, who, instead of freezing one with an Arctic token of ac- 
knowledgment, answered with a smile that would melt the heart 
of a millstone. The mob henceforward delighted to run ahead 
of his lordship, on the street, crying to the waiting crowd, "Hats 
off, for his lordship!" And woe to the beaver head-covering of 
any crusty old Tory who was slow to uncover at the cry! 

There was a great scene when, in his rich robes of office. Lord 
Mayor O'Connell rode through the streets attended by the Alder- 
men in their robes, to the Roman Catholic Cathedral. The very 
hardihood of making those robes, so long consecrated to Orange- 



576 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

ism, ride to a Roman Catholic Cathedral, was refreshing to the 
populace. 

But the great man never forgot method in his madness. As, 
with truly Brit'sh ingenuity, the Act which emancipated Catholics 
decreed a fine of one hundred pounds for the criminal who would 
attend a Papist place of worship in robes of office, Dan got from 
under his robes outside the Cathedral door — where the Orange 
vestments surlily waited on the porch till his lordship returned 
from his idolatry. 

Now the Repeal movement was in full swing. And O'Connell 
filled the land with the agitation. In wonderful speech after 
speech bristling with urge, ringing with hope, and thundering with 
defiance, he fostered the ferment in which the populace found 
itself. 

"What good have we obtained from England in the season 
of her prosperity?" he thundered in the Association Hall. "She 
has made us weep tears of blood. But she may want us yet. Is 
there, even now, no hurricane threatening her from the other side 
of the Atlantic, careering against the sun, advancing with the 
speed of heaven's lightning? Hear we not the rattling of the 
hail, the driving of the tempest? Is there no danger that we may 
be needed to defend the western possessions of Britain? Lx)ok 
next at France — is she so kind, so friendly, as she has been? Does 
the aspect of the Continent in general promise to England a con- 
tinuance of Continental friendship? Then, England's eastern ter- 
ritories — are they safe? Let Afghanistan answer! Saw you not 
the gallant regiment that passed along the quay a few moments 
ago? Whither go they? To India or to China? What signs 
are there of peace? From east to west, from north to south, a 
storm is lowering — through the darkening atmosphere we can hear 
the boom of the distant thunder — we discern the flashes of the 
coming lightning." But then, ever mindful of his loyalty, season- 
ing the defiance with the spice of fealty, he continues: "Yet even 
in the midst of the tempest may England have safety. She will 
need the aid of Irishmen. She shall have that aid. But" — his 
loyalty having testified, the politician speaks, "Irishmen require 
a bribe. Here am I who want a bribe. I zvtll take a bribe. I must 
get a bribe. And my bribe is Repeal of the Union I" 

"Grattan," he told them, again, "sat by the cradle of his coun- 
try, and followed its hearse. It has been left to me to sound the 
resurrection trumpet, and show that our country was not dead, 
but only slept." And by such figures, rung out in the magnificent 



THE GREAT REPEAL FIGHT 577 

tones of one of the most rousing orators of the age, did he drive 
the nation forward in the joyous fight. The leader was in the 
finest fettle of his life. He had already forgotten the dark days 
when he lost his grip ; his loving people had forgotten them. He 
rode on the ridge of his world again — lifted infinitely higher than 
ever before. 

The Repeal organisation grew splendidly systematised and 
marvellously complete in every detail, in all corners of Ireland. 
Commemorating the three hundred Volunteer representatives in 
1782, and the three hundred members of Grattan's Parliament, 
it had a Central Council of three hundred. As, under the Conven- 
tion Act of 1793, the people could not elect delegates to represent 
them^ the members of the Council were men from various parts 
of Ireland chosen to carry to the Repeal Treasury in Dublin a 
hundred pounds or more from their own neighbours and fellow- 
workers. Every parish had its branch of the Repeal Association. 
They appointed their Repeal wardens; they organised Arbitra- 
tion courts to keep peace among neighbours who must march shoul- 
der to shoulder in the great fight. They had their cavalry for 
marshalling and leading them at meetings. They had their Repeal 
Reading rooms. All faction and all crime was by them sternly 
put down. Their Repeal rent was regularly lifted from ready 
subscribers — and the whole country, organised and marshalled, was 
in finer fighting trim than at any time for forty years gone. They 
were ready for anything — peace or war — just as the fearless leader 
should direct. 

But howsoever much he might indulge in the rhetorical storm, 
peace was with O'Connell a fetish. 

The climax of the great Repeal fight came in '43. That was 
the year of the Monster meetings, the year of the sublime hope 
and the undaunted resolve, of the mighty welding of two million 
men into one solid bulwark of freedom. And yet, alas, it was 
the sad year of real defeat! 

To a nation hanging on his every word and implicitly accept- 
ing every dictum, he proclaimed '43 "Repeal year" — and the jubi- 
lant nation pushed onward, with redoubled vigour, to the blessed 
goal. In that great year the fearless leader rode :he whirlwind. 
The Repeal rent, flowing from the pockets of the ready people, 
multiplied with every succeeding week. His personal tribute that 
year mounted to the handsome figure of twenty thousand pounds. 
And the people considered it not half enough — and would have 
repeated it again and again if they only got the hint. 



578 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

All Ireland was full of fight as well as jubilation, and full of 
a new-found confidence in its own power, which all of England's 
armies could not down. 

The people were full of fight in the literal as well as the fig- 
urative sense of the word, and hundreds of thousands of them 
cherished the half-concealed belief that if Prime Minister Peel 
did not surrender to O'Connell peacefully, their leader, despite 
his oft-shouted warning that freedom was too dearly purchased at 
the price of a single drop of blood — would whisper a word which 
should thrill the nation to its uttermost headland, and conjure up 
a countless, indomitable, army in a single night. 

The fighting spirit which stirred the hearts of the people that 
year expressed itself at those wonderful gatherings, unique ia the 
history of nations — the Monster meetings. It is somewhat diffi- 
cult for Irishmen, and almost impossible for outsiders, to-day, to 
realize that at each of a series of forty meetings held all over the 
land, in that memorable year, there gathered one hundred thou- 
sand people, two hundred thousand, four hundred thousand, and 
upwards to numbers uncountable. Yet such was the fact. A quar- 
ter of a million people in attendance came to be considered mod- 
erate. The London Times conceded a million to the gathering 
on the hill of Tara. 

O'Connell, feeling that the hostile English Parliament would 
not consent to bow to the will of the Irish people, again and again 
in his speeches, which were swaying the multitude, appealed over 
the head of Parliament to Royalty. He pointed out that the 
Queen of England had the right, of her own accord, to summon a 
Parliament in Dublin. And, influenced by his worship of Victoria, 
he seems actually to have worked himself into the belief that her 
love for the Irish people was such that she might resort to this 
extraordinary step.^ 

The mighty development of the movement in Ireland, the fer- 
ment, the astonishing spirit of the people, the organisation, the 
gatherings, the speeches, deeply alarmed the English Government. 
Prime Minister Peel felt it necessary, publicly and authoritatively 
to declare that his Queen's sentiments on the question of Repeal 
were the very opposite of what O'Connell had attributed to her. 
Peel also declared that if O'Connell forced the issue of civil war 

1 He would have got a rude awakening had he lived to read in his noble hero- 
ine's private correspondence, when it came to be published, her letter written to 
Leopold of Belgium, after the subsidence of the '48 movement — in which she ex- 
pressed her regret that the general uprising had not taken place as planned, "so 
that the Irish might be taught a lesson !" The little testimony to royal charity 
was carefully eliminated from the second and succeeding editions of the book. 



THE GREAT REPEAL FIGHT 579 

or Repeal, England would without hesitation choose the former. 

And, for all his ludicrous loyalty to the crown of England and 
for all his oft-sworn antipathy to bloodshed, O'Connell, several 
times during this exciting summer, seemed to have caught some- 
thing of the undaunted spirit which he had aroused in the breasts 
of the people. They had eight million people in Ireland, he warned 
Peel, and another million Irish in the United States of America, 
and practically said to him: Come on if you dare! "We shall 
make no rebellion," O'Connell said. "We wish no civil war. We 
shall keep on the ground of the Constitution, as long as we are 
allowed; but if Peel forces a contest, if he invades the constitu- 
tional rights of the people — then vae victis between the contend- 
ing parties! Where is the coward who would not die for such a 
land as Ireland! Let our enemies attack us if they dare. They 
shall never trample me under foot!" 

And at the great Mallow meeting in June, where four hun- 
dred thousand people attended (just a few days after the Kilkenny 
meeting with its three hundred thousand) O'Connell waxed so 
militant as to quote with intense spirit Moore's words : 

"Oh, where's the slave so lowlj% 
Condemned to chains unholy, 
Who could he burst, 
His bonds accurst, 
Would pine beneath them slowly!" 

And he thrilled his audience by thundering out, "I'm not that 
slave !" 

Then also he launched the famous Mallow defiance, a charac- 
teristic O'Connell compound of independence and subserviency, 
sedition, and loyalty. "You may soon have the alternative to live 
as slaves," he shouted, "or die as freemen. ... If they assailed 
us to-morrow, and we should conquer them — as conquer them we 
will, some day — our first use of that victory, would be to put the 
sceptre in the hands of Victoria. . . . They may trample on me, 
but it will be the dead body of me they will trample, not the liv- 
ing man!" 

"Ah," said the pleased people, "Dan will now pass the word." 
And though the waiting host had not in sight any more effective 
arms than pitchforks and the like, they were willing with them to 
try and push the British army into the sea. 

But when the Mallow defiance had roused the fighting spirit 
and the militant hopes of a million, Dan took the opportunity of 
the great Skibbereen meeting, ten days or so later, to lay the mar- 



58o THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

tial spirit he had evoked. "It is better," he counselled in Skib- 
bereen, "to live for Ireland than to die for her." If O'ConneU's 
inconsistencies this year confused the enemy as much as they did 
his own hosts, there might be something to be said in their favour. 

Anyway, England was getting profoundly embarrassed, as well 
as frightened. Her enemies and the world were following every 
step of the Irish struggle. There was held in New York a great 
conference on Ireland, lasting a week — whereat it was counselled 
that if England plunged Ireland into civil war, Canada should be 
seized. President Tyler said that Ireland should have Repeal. 
Some of the French even came forward with offers of money and 
of arms and men. British regiments were thrown into Ireland. 
The British navy circled it with a chain of warships. Feverish 
preparations for the worst were made by the Government. 

Meantime the Monster meetings had gone forward, still in- 
creasing in numbers and in enthusiasm. One of the most won- 
derful things and one of the most pregnant, too, with alarm for 
England was, that Ireland, though rocking from shore to shore 
with excitement, became absolutely crimeless. This ominous fact 
frightened Ireland's governors infinitely more than if crime had 
raged over the land. The Monster meetings were signally char- 
acterised by an utter absence of both drink and disorder,' Father 
Mathew's Total Abstinence movement had swept the land, and 
secured this. The preaching, the teaching, and the drilling of the 
parish branches of the Repeal Association, had completed the 
good work. Thousands and tens of thousands of men marched 
to the meetings in military formation, quick to the word of com- 
mand. And many, be it noted, marched a day and a night to the 
gathering place. 

But the greatest and most memorable of all the great meet- 
ings was that at Tara — on Lady Day in August. To the historic 
place, crowds had been travelling for days and nights. Immense 
were the numbers that arrived at the Hill overnight. On the hill- 
side were set up six altars, around which knelt multitudes to hear 
Mass in the morning. From daybreak the unending streams of 
humanity could be seen, riding, driving, walking — streaming to it 
from all points of the compass, every minute augmenting the sea 
of humanity that overspread the meeting place. An army of ten 
thousand Repeal cavalry rode out the Dublin road to meet O'Con- 

2 Except once, when, it is told, an ardent English enthusiast, who came to help 
the work, lost his hat — and likewise his temper. "Damn you people!" he shouted. 
"I came here all the way from England to emancipate you, and you stole my hat." 
And he indignantly returned to England without emancipating them. 



THE GREAT REPEAL FIGHT 581 

nell, and such was the extent and the crush of the great multitude 
that when they reached nigh the hill with him, it took them an 
hour and a half to steer him a mile through the living sea. Headed 
by bands and banners and marshalled by horsemen, no such gath- 
ering as that at Tara was ever seen before, and may never be 
seen again. While The London Times admitted a million as the 
number at the gathering, and the Repealers claimed twelve hun- 
dred thousand, if we, in skeptical mood, suppose that, by error, 
even the Times overestimated by even doubling the count, the 
number would still be so huge as to strain our imagination.^ 

When his eye swept over that human sea O'Connell himself 
must have marvelled at the spirit that animated the nation. 
"What," he said, "could England effect against such a people so 
thoroughly aroused, if, provoked past endurance, they rose out in 
rebellion." The leader was not only elated by the wonderful 
things he saw and felt — but possibly alarmed. For he added: 
"While I live such an uprising will never occur."* 

One of the last of the big meetings was that at Mullaghmast, 
the scene of the famous massacre of Irish chieftains in the time 
of Elizabeth of England. Four hundred thousand was the num- 
ber said to have assembled there. Mullaghmast was the famous 
occasion of O'Connell's accepting a crown prepared for him, and 
presented to him by, the sculptor Hogan, the artist MacManus, 
and John Cornelius O'Callaghan the historian — an incident that 
naturally aroused wild enthusiasm, not only in the huge gathering 
that watched, but all over Ireland. 

The Monster meetings of the year were to culminate and climax 
a week after Mullaghmast, on the battleplain of Clontarf, out- 
side Dublin, where Brian Boru had broken the foreign invader 
and cast him into the sea. And now the Government, thoroughly 
aroused to its imminent danger, took desperate resolve. At the 
eleventh hour it forbade the Clontarf meeting. Sunday was to 
have been the meeting day. At three o'clock on Saturday after- 
noon — when already, from a hundred distant points, masses of 
marching men had started for the morrow's rendezvous — it pa- 
pered Dublin with the proclamation. Five regiments of soldiers, 
with cannon 'and all the appliances of war, were stationed at van- 

3 Gavan Duffy would lead us to infer that all estimates of all the Monster 
meetings were about double the actual figures. 

* The spirit that raised up such a gathering will be all the more appreciated 
when it is remembered that on the same day, at less than a hundred miles' dis- 
tance, in County Monaghan, was another gathering, estimated at a quarter of a 
million men. 



582 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

tage points in and around Clontarf. The gauntlet was thrown 
down to O'Connell. 

An emergency meeting of the Repeal executive was instantly 
summoned. O'Connell, telling them that nothing would justify 
his permitting vast masses of unarmed men to be mowed down, 
pronounced that there was nothing to do but submit. They of 
course agreed. Mounted messengers were instantly sent flying 
out of Dublin along every road that led to the Capital. All bodies 
of marching men were turned back, and the word sent everywhere 
far and wide over the country that no meeting would be on the 
morrow. 

The Government had taken a dangerous hazard and won. 

And they quickly followed up their advantage. On Sunday 
morning they arrested O'Connell, his son John, Ray the Repeal 
Treasurer, Tom Steele, two priests, and the editors of three Na- 
tionalist papers, Gray of The Freeman's Journal, Barrett of The 
Pilot, and Duffy of The Nation. These were charged with con- 
spiring to change the Constitution by illegal methods, and to ex- 
cite disaffection. 

The country stood on tip-toe awaiting "the Avord" from O'Con- 
nell — whatever that word might be. And tens of thousands of 
eager ones prayed that it might be a bold one. But, Peace was 
the word given by the leader. 

The people implicitly obeyed. The man who disobeyed the 
order would be a traitor to the cause and the country. Even The 
Nation, which after a little while was to condemn O'Connell for 
lack of boldness, and lead a revolt from him, sternly commanded 
that the captain's word must be unquestioningly obeyed. 

The Traversers were tried by a packed jury of Tories and 
Orangemen. No Catholic was permitted on it. A whole file of 
the jury list, containing names of men who could not be welcomed 
to the jury by the prosecution, was, before the trial, "lost" from 
the sheriff's complete list. The spirit that sat in the British judg- 
ment seat then, as in most Irish political trials, was well and 
ludicrously exemplified by the presiding Chief Justice, Penne- 
father, when in giving an opinion upon a disputed point, he let 
slip : "I speak under the correction of the gentlemen of the other 
side!" 

The Traversers were of course found guilty, O'Connell was 
sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment, to pay a fine of two 
thousand pounds, and give bail to be of good behaviour for seven 
years. The others were given nine months' imprisonment, fifty 
pounds' fine, and bail. Between the time of the verdict and the 



THE GREAT REPEAL FIGHT 583 

sentence, O'Connell, weakening, re-formed the Repeal Associa- 
tion so as to eliminate from it things that had now been estab- 
lished as unlawful — including his Arbitration Courts. And he set 
the example of closing every meeting by calling for cheers for 
England's Queen! It was upon this unwise retreat that The Na- 
tion and Young Ireland, violently opposing, began to break with 
him. 

Yet he held the unhesitating loyalty of the country at large. 
And every tyrannical and unjust step of the Government, from the 
eve of Clontarf till they put the leader in prison, seemed to 
strengthen the people's fight — and, moreover, brought into the 
ranks many of the gentry who had hitherto stood outside — includ- 
ing Smith O'Brien. The Repeal rent went on increasing. When 
the final step of imprisoning him was taken, the Repeal rent 
bounded up with a great bound. In the quarter of a year after 
O'Connell went into prison, there was taken four times as much 
rent as in the quarter of a year preceding. Though the move- 
ment had undoubtedly got a rude check, the spirit of the country, 
strange to say, was not even feazed. 

Yet time proved that on the day of Clontarf was dug the 
grave of O'Connell's Repeal. 



CHAPTER LXVIII 

THE END OF O'CONNELL 

But the movement and the man had an Indian summer. 

The great criminal in prison was as a mighty prince holding 
court. Deputations from all parts of Ireland, led by mayors of 
cities, bishops, and other dignitaries daily arrived to pay him 
court. Every word of O'Connell's, going out from his prison 
walls, had now double as much weight as had formerly the weighti- 
est pronouncement of the free O'Connell, thundered from a plat- 
form. 

After four months they were released by decision of the Law 
Lords of the House of Lords, when these heard the case on appeal. 
Two hundred thousand people frantic with joy, on the day of his 
release jammed the streets along which rode the Liberator from 
the prison to his home, throned in state on the high deck of a spe- 
cially made triumphal car. It was one of the proudest days of a 
life that had been enriched with a plenitude of proud ones. 

And on the second day after, great crowds crammed Con- 
ciliation Hall, and the streets surrounding it, to hear the message 
of the liberated leader, and get, as they thought, fresh inspiration 
for the still further speeding of the struggle. 

But Clontarf and its sequel, the trial and imprisonment, had 
marked a great turning point in Dan's career; and he now disap- 
pointed the nation. While the speech rang as boldly as ever with 
denunciations of the Government that had perverted the laws to 
imprison him, and with threats of what he would do to them, and 
to all their minions, including Pennefather and the other mis- 
Judges on the Bench — all of which won the old wild plaudits from 
his hearers — he did not suggest a plan or lay a line for carrying 
the light to fruition. He studiously avoided any statement of 
future policy — only emphasised, with an emphasis that did not 
decrease the people's disappointment, his too-oft reiterated single- 
drop-of-blood theory, boasting that he was the first apostle and 
founder of that noble political creed whose cardinal doctrine was 
that no human revolution was worth the effusion of one red drop. 

And without giving the country a lead he went home to Derry- 
nane to rest and recuperate — to forget politics for a period, stroll 



THE END OF O'CONNELL 585 

by the white strands of Kerry, and on its mountains hunt the hare. 
Afterwards, it was on all sides conceded that the softening of the 
brain which was to end his life, had set in during the months of 
his imprisonment. He was nevermore the old Dan, the bold Dan, 
whose magnetic power had gifted him, by the lifting of a little 
finger, to lead a nation. 

In the course of a few months he courted Federalism — which 
a generation later came to be called Home Rule — and he compelled 
the Repeal Association to admit into its ranks the Federalists, a 
party of Whig country gentlemen for the most part, but having 
in their ranks a few progressive intellectual ones like William 
Smith O'Brien and the young poet Davis. But he soon found 
that Federalism fell flat on the country, even where, as amongst 
the thinking ones, it did not actually call up antagonism. And 
when he came up to Dublin in May for the great anniversary cele- 
bration of his imprisonment, the politician Dan confided to the 
people, who had spurned his Federalism, that after having now 
given the fullest consideration to Federalism, he considered — 
with a snap of the fingers — it wasn't worth that! And during the 
minutes of the multitude's frantic applause the astute Dan felt gqpd 
reason for pluming himself that he was the peerless leader still. 

And indeed in the hearts and thoughts of the vast body of the 
people he was. The homage paid him at that anniversary celebra- 
tion was almost equal to anything he had before experienced. Let 
the bitterly antagonistic Tory Mail describe it, "While we write 
this," says the Mail, "Mr. O'Connell is sitting in autocratic state 
in the throne room of the Rotunda, surrounded by his peers, and 
receiving the addresses of the authorities, the corporate bodies, 
the nobility, clergy and gentry of his peculiar dominion. The 
business of the city is at a standstill. Professional duties are in 
suspense; tradesmen have closed their shops; the handicrafts have 
left their callings; and, save the great thoroughfares through which 
the ovation of the Autocrat is to pass, the streets are deserted, 
and as noiseless as a wilderness. In the latter, shops lie open, but 
without a customer; in the former the barricaded doors and win- 
dows scarce suffice to resist the pressure of the throng. A count- 
less multitude, crowding all the avenues leading to the autocrat's 
presence, forms depse alleys for the passage of the public bodies, 
which, headed by their appointed leaders — some In military cos- 
tume, some in their civic robes of ofiice, and all in full dress — 
proceed to the music of the bands, with regimental uniformity, 
towards the chamber where their self-elected sovereign has ap- 
pointed to receive their homage." 



586 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

But alas, It was only In the warm hearts of a loving, worship- 
ping people that their sovereign's greatness now lived. His old 
stamina gone, he could not evolve a new policy or face a fresh 
fight. Forgetful of his sad, sad lesson of the 'Thirties, he let him- 
self again lean upon the Whigs — or, maybe It could be said, let 
the Whigs lean upon him. In '45 the Whig leader, Lord John 
Russell, had become so popular with the Irish leader that we find 
Dan threatening to transfer to his brows his own Mullaghmast 
crown. And a few months later, in May of '46 — while Ireland 
staggered from the first bad blow of the '45 potato blight — we 
find the uncrowned king. Lord John, with his Whig following, 
trooping into the division lobby, shoulder to shoulder with the 
Tories, to vote comfort to England's suffering sister In the form 
of a vile Coercion Bill. This, on the Bill's first reading. Before 
the second reading was reached the Whigs found need for O'Con- 
nell and his fellows, enlisted again Dan's alliance to throw out 
the Tories — which he enabled them to do — and put their kind 
selves In power. And on the old, old and again implicitly be- 
lieved promise of remedial measures for Ireland, O'Connell prac- 
tically blotted out of his dictionary the word Repeal. 

The Nation party, the Young Ireland party, which had Its first 
serious difference with O'Connell on his Federal fad, led now by 
Duffy, Mitchel and Smith O'Brien, were rebelling against him 
and the Association (which was controlled by his son John) ; and, 
seeking an antidote to the Whigs' opiate, were preaching revolu- 
tion to the country. The final split between the old and the new 
came when Dan ordered the Association to purge itself by passing 
the Peace Resolutions — which would pledge every man within the 
Association ranks to the single-drop-of-blood policy. The split 
at that meeting of the Association was immediately precipitated 
by young Meagher's Sword speech. 

John O'Connell made immediate reply to Meagher, "These 
sentiments imperil the very existence of our association. Either 
Mr. Meagher or I must leave." Thereupon the Young Ireland 
leaders, Duffy, Mitchel, O'Brien and Meagher, marched out of 
the hall, and out of the Association. 

And henceforward to the sincerely grieved Daniel O'Connell 
and his lieutenants in the Association, the Young Ireland party, 
more than England, were Ireland's enemy.^ 

1 Mitchel (in after years) named O'Connell, "next to the British Government, 
the greatest enemy Ireland ever had." It was owing to his influence, Mitchel held, 
that the attempted insurrection of '48 ended in failure. In his Jail Journal he, not 
without much of the exaggeration of prejudice, exclaims, "Poor old Danl Won- 



THE END OF O'CONNELL 587 

And now, day by day, more ardently than ever Dan courted 
and flattered the new Whig friends who had come to him, and 
more bitterly than ever denounced the Irish friends who had left 
him. 

Famine now fastened its clutch on the country. The potato 
crop of '46, which was eagerly expected to cure the acute distress 
produced by the '45 failure, was blighted — and proved a more 
overwhelming failure than that of the year before. And the har- 
vest of '47 was yet to plunge the people in far deeper distress. 

The dreadful sufferings of the poor people now helped to 
complete the Liberator's mental breakdown. The heart of him 
sank down into sadness. The Tribute v/hich had been paid to 
him annually by his faithful people, and which, through recent 
years had amounted to about twenty thousand pounds annually, 
he now spurned. His friend Fitzpatrick, who had had charge of 
the Tribute, was rebuked by him for mentioning it in a time so 
pitiful. For though in his necessarily lavish way of living he 
needed money now, as always, and could command all he pleased 
whenever he pleased, he was never avaricious. And the sugges- 
tion of taking money from the people in these times cut him to 
the quick. 

In the beginning of '47, though feeling sick and worn both in 
body and soul, he set out upon the sore week's journey to London 
to plead, this time, the material cause of the people. He made his 
last appearance, and last speech in Parliament, in February of 
that year. It was a pathetic scene, the pitifulness of which affected 
some of his bitterest enemies — who now saw and heard with pain 
the bent and broken giant, in tones weak, shaken, and .indistinct, 
plead with them, beg of them, for sake of God and common hu- 
manity, to save his perishing people ! 

All the more heart-breaking for the giant was this trial, since 
he felt from sad, long, and bitter experience, that he spoke to ears 
that were officially deaf. Howsoever sympathetic they might have 
felt individually in response to his plea, these British members of 

derful. mighty, jovial, and mean old man ! With silver tongue and smile of witchery 
and heart of unfathomable fraud ! What a royal yet vulgar soul, with the keen 
eye and potent sweep of a generous eagle of Cairn Tuathal — with the base servility 
of a hound, and the cold cruelty of a spider! Think of his speech for John Magee, 
the most powerful forensic achievement since before Demosthenes, and then think 
of the 'gorgeous and gossamer' theory of moral and peaceful agitation, the most 
astounding organon of public swindling since first man bethought him of obtaining 
money under fa^se pretence. And after one has thought of all this and more, what 
then can a man say? What but pray that Irish earth may lie light on O'Connell's 
breast, and that the good God who knew how to create so wondrous a creature may 
have mercy upon his soul?" 



588 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Parliament were jealous guardians of tradition. And British 
tradition always held that it was a serious mistake and setting 
unwise precedent ever to extend a helping hand to the perverse 
step-child of the Empire. 

O'Connell went back to his hotel, and lay down, ill. "Take 
me home to Kerry!" No, it was ordered by the physicians — who 
diagnosed lingering congestion of the brain — that his only chance 
was to seek sunshine and distraction, under southern skies. He 
refused. But he soon compromised with them on the scheme of a 
pilgrimage to Rome. 

He set out under charge of his youngest son, Daniel, and his 
chaplain, Dr, Miley. His sad, slow journey was yet reheved and 
made memorable by many proud things. The most noted men 
and Societies of the chief Continental cities through which they 
passed came to do homage to the famous invalid. Had he not 
been suffering from such deep depression, it would have been for 
him a truly triumphal journey. Not perhaps since the year Napo- 
leon escaped from Elba had the journeying of any man through 
France been so widely chronicled on the Continent, so eagerly 
read of, caused such profound sensation. 

He appeared to brighten, and the cloud over his mind to 
lighten, as he progressed south. But at Genoa he was severely 
stricken. He could go, would go, no farther. He took to his 
bed, there, and sank gradually. The sinking of an exiled monarch 
in their midst could not have moved and stirred the good citizens 
of Genoa as did that of the Irish Liberator — and certainly would 
not have evoked a tithe of the pleading prayers, deep and sincere, 
that from all classes, high and low, were daily going up for the 
dying man. 

The great man's end came, calm and painless, on May 15th, 
1847. ^^ accordance with his dying wish, his heart, enshrined 
in a silver urn, was taken to Rome, where it was received with 
signal honours. The body was carried on the long journey to 
Ireland. And city vied with city in doing highest homage to it as 
it passed. To the funeral ship on the sea passages the ships of 
all nations lowered their flag. When a little Skerries fishing 
craft, accidentally encountering the funeral ship on the Irish sea, 
learnt that it bore O'Connell, it is recorded that all hands, in- 
cluding the helmsman, let go everything, fell upon their knees, and 
while their little craft drifted, prayed toward the funeral ship till 
they were lost sight of. When the O'Connell ship was entering 
Dublin Bay they met, coming out, a big passenger ship, the Bir- 
mingham, crowded with poor emigrants leaving their beloved land 



THE END OF O'CONNELL 589 

behind — most of them, forever. The moment these creatures 
recognised the funeral ship, they spontaneously dropped on their 
knees on the deck, and with hands uplifted to heaven, raised the 
wildly sorrowful caoine (keen). 

Having been accorded the greatest funeral that Dublin had 
ever witnessed, the remains of Daniel O'Connell were laid under 
the earth in Glasnevin cemetery on August 5th, 1847 — while a 
whole nation wept the loss of a leader, than whom no Captain of 
any people was ever more widely, more deeply, and, let us say, 
on the whole more deservedly beloved. 

By his intimate and personal friend, O'Neill Daunt, it was truly 
said of O'Connell: *'Well may his countrymen feel pride in the 
extraordinary man, who, for a series of years, could assail and 
defy a hostile and powerful government, who could knit together 
a prostrate, divided, and dispirited nation into a resolute and in- 
vincible confederacy; who could lead his followers in safety through 
the traps and pitfalls that beset their path to freedom; who could 
baffle all the artifices of sectarian bigotry; and finally overthrow 
the last strongholds of anti-Cathoiic tyranny by the simple might 
of public opinion." 

For O'Connell and the O'Connell Period read : 
Lives of O'Connell by MacDonagh, Fagan, Luby. 
Personal Recollections of O'Connell, O'Neill DaunL 
Leaders of Public Opinion, Lecky. 



CHAPTER LXIX 

YOUNG IRELAND 

The Young Ireland movement developed naturally from the 
O'Connell movement. When any, the best, movement in the world 
grows old with its founder, it gradually loses its idealism, inspira- 
tion, and progressiveness, follows the line of least resistance and 
accepts men measures and methods that in its heyday it would have 
scorned. 

The O'Connell movement, grown old, was no exception to 
the law. We have seen that during the 'Thirties O'Connell fell 
far from his earlier high aims, and dragging his movement, bound 
but willing, after the Whig chariot, lost it its respect, prestige and 
effectiveness. Its strength ebbed, and it was honeycombed with 
placehunters. The leader made a bold burst in the early 'For- 
ties, resolved to put the movement in its high place again, but 
though he was a giant the effort needed more than a giant's strength. 
Besides he was now far from being the same moral giant who had 
pulled down the pillars of the enemy's temple twenty years before. 
True, the magic of his name and the memory of the dauntless 
O'Connell that had been, rallied behind him for a time the same 
nation in the same solid phalanx as of yore. But the giant leader 
now had not the same unflinching determination and unwavering 
vision which used to drive and draw him to victory over all ob- 
stacles. He did not now so surely feel the lofty ideals which he 
voiced, and consequently was not so irresistibly drawn on by them. 
In the olden days, in the fight for Emancipation, O'Connell was 
supereminently intolerant of any suggestion of compromise, and 
as a consequence won out. In these days, however, though he de- 
manded as undauntedly and thundered as defiantly as before, he 
nursed in the back of his mind the wish to accept a part if he could 
not get the whole — occasionally too, let the wish thrust its head 
from its hiding-place. Consequently he failed. 

The younger men whom he fired by his eloquence in the first 
forward move of the 'Forties, and who took his words at their 
face value, grew restive when at length they discovered that they 

59C 



YOUNG IRELAND 591 

had been deceived — and went out from his movement to found 
for themselves a more forward one, the Young Ireland move- 
ment. — I 

The poet, Thomas Davis, was the founder of it. He was a 
young Protestant barrister from Cork. He was smitten by the en- 
thusiasm in the air and drawn into the Repeal Movement. With a 
County Monaghan young man, Charles Gavan Duffy, then editing 
a national weekly in Belfast, and a young barrister, John Blake 
Dillon, he founded The Nation — to support the movement for Re- 
peal, to propagate patriotism in the country, and to develop a love 
for Irish national literature. The Nation was destined to be a 
great power in the land, and to leave behind it a magnificent and 
inspiring tradition. The support of these intensely earnest and 
eminently able young men, and of their organ, which instantly 
leaped into powerful popularity, at first pleased O'Connell. But 
when, after a time, they showed that they had minds of their own, 
which exquisite blarney could not befog, he grew, first impatient 
with, and then resentful of, them. It was the O'Connellites, too, 
who in derision — because they failed to follow the Leader in every 
vagary In which he would indulge — first named them Young Ire- 
landers. And that which was first applied to them in opprobrium 
came in course of time to be their pride. _j 

* With historical essays, patriotic ballads and poems, and virile 
national articles, they aroused and enthused the people — especially 
the young men, and quickly made for themselves a great follow- 
ing. They attracted and gathered around them the finest minds 
of the nation — till three patriot propagandists soon increased to 
thirty-three. Through the medium of the loved Nation, there 
blossomed upon Ireland poets, essayists, and patriots, the memory 
of most of whom has been an inspiration to succeeding generations 
of young Irish men and women, and will be cherished by genera- 
tions yet to come. Duffy and Davis themselves gave to the country 
some of its most inspiring songs and ballads, and their efforts were 
well sustained by Denis Florence McCarthy, Samuel Ferguson, 
Michael Doheny, John Fisher Murray, Denny Lane, "Eva," 
"Mary," "Speranza" (Lady Wilde), Drennan, Brennan, Clar- 
ence Mangan, Devin Reilly, Barry and D'Arcy McGee.^ And two 
of their greatest acquisitions undoubtedly were William Smith 
O'Brien and John Mitchel. 

The death of Davis, young, brave, the hope of the country, in 

^ Sad to say, in later davs, Barry and also McGee who sang some noble strains 
and did, each, a man's work in the Young Ireland movement, lapsed and fell far 
from the ideal of their j^oung manhood. 



592 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

'45, was a sad blow, and probably a greater disaster than we can 
ever definitely realise, not only to Young Ireland but to Ireland- 
So loveable and so estimable was he, and so big with promise of 
a great future was his young life, that the whole nation wept — just 
as O'Connell wept when he learnt the sad news. 

O'Brien, v/ho eventually became one of the most prominent fig- 
ures in the Young Ireland movement, was a Protestant country 
gentleman, studious of habit, who had not shown any national lean- 
ings until the O'Connell Repeal movement first won him to nation- 
alism. The Young Ireland party gradually won him over from 
O'Connell. Their greatest acquisition was John Mitchel, son of 
a Unitarian minister, who was practising law in Banbridge when 
The Nation inspired him, drew him to Dublin, and into the whirl 
of national politics. In turn he drew in his brother-in-law the gen- 
tle but firm-willed John Martin. 

The Nation gave fresh impetus to those who had already been 
inspired by O'Connell, and it awoke in their breasts a new spirit. 
O'Connell had deluded the multitude into giving awed respect to 
the foreign laws that bound them, marching to Repeal meetings in 
their many thousands, that they might cheer his speeches to the 
skies, and go home again without breach of law or order — leaving 
him and Providence to do the rest. The Nation and the Young 
Irelanders, while still giving heartiest help to O'Connell, managed, 
at first by suggestion, afterwards by plain precept, to stir the mili- 
tant spirit in the people, and to impress on them that platform talk 
had to be backed by grim resolve, and that a nation's freedom was 
worth fighting and dying for. The militancy of the verse and prose 
that every week warmed the cold print, and enlivened the columns, 
of The Nation — and then the breasts of the people — hurt O'Con- 
nell, and alarmed him — and excited his jealousy, moreover. And 
when, in reply to a warning from the English press that the new 
Irish railway system afforded effective means for the quick move- 
ment of troops against Repealers grown bold, Mitchel, in The 
Nation wrote an article showing the people how easily railway 
lines could be rendered ineffective, O'Connell was thereby so deeply 
incensed that he held both the Repeal Association and himself silent 
while The Nation was now being prosecuted for sedition. 

Other causes of irritation to Dan were that they had opposed 
him on Federalism when he gave way for a time to that weakness — 
and upon the propriety of accepting the Queen's Colleges. On this 
latter issue he and his Repeal Association opposed them bitterly, 
going to such extravagant length as to accuse The Nation of being 
a school of infidelity. 



YOUNG IRELAND 593 

While there was absolutely no ground for this accusation against 
the Young Irelanders, they had the best possible ground for being 
aggrieved against Dan and his Association for letting itself down 
from nationality to sectarianism. Young Ireland had set before 
it as one of its prime objects, the winning over to nationalism of 
the Protestant elements of the country; and they found the Repeal 
Association demonstrating that it was only a Catholic Association, 
thus driving the Orange element into its old anti-Irish shell. The 
breach between the Old and Young Irelanders widened when Wil- 
liam Smith O'Brien, living up to O'Connell's command of '46, that 
the Repeal Members of Parliament should remain away from the 
British House to work for Ireland in Ireland, and refuse even to 
serve upon Special Committees to which Parliament commandeered 
them, went to prison in the House for disobedience — while O'Con- 
nell and his son, forsaking the principle, tamely obeyed the Par- 
liamentary order. Young Ireland espoused the cause of O'Brien, 
commended him for his devotion to principle and Ireland — and 
thereby of course severely censured O'Connell. 

Finally, when O'Connell, repeating his grave error of the 'Thir- 
ties, not only allied himself with the Whigs, but thus tacitly de- 
serted Repeal, he was openly reprimanded by The Nation and 
Young Ireland. O'Connell, furious at such flagrant insubordina- 
tion in the Repeal ranks resolved to rid it of all mutinous ones. 
For this purpose he directed the Repeal Association to reaffirm the 
constitutional and peace principles on which the Association was 
founded, and make every member subscribe to these principles. 
This would automatically rid the movement of the militants. The 
Peace Resolutions debate, which it came to be called, was a fierce 
one, lasting two days, and reaching its climax when Meagher burst 
into his famous sword speech — 

"The soldier is proof against an argument, but he is not proof 
against a bullet. The man who will listen to reason let him be rea- 
soned with ; but it is the weaponed arm of the patriot that can alone 
avail against battalioned despotism. I do not disclaim the use of 
arms as immoral, nor do I believe it is the truth to say that the 
God of Heaven withholds His sanction from the use of arms. From 
the day on which, in the valley of Bethulia, He nerv^ed the arm of 
the Jewish girl to smite the drunken tyrant in his tent, dmvn to the 
hour in which He blessed the insurgent chivaliy of the Belgian 
priests, His Almighty hand hath been stretched forth from His 
throne of light, to consecrate the flag of freedom, to bless the 
patriots' sword. Be it for the defence, or be it for the assertion, of 
a nation's liberty, I look upon the svwrd as a sacred weapon. And 



594 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

if, my lord, it has sometimes reddened the shroud of the oppressor, 
like the anointed rod of the high priest, it has, at other times, blos- 
somed into flower to deck the free man's brow. Abhor the Siword, 
and stigmatise the sword? No, my lord, for in the cragged passes 
of the Tyrol it cut in pieces the banner of the Bavarian, and won 
an immortality for the peasant of Inspruck. Abhor the sword and 
stigmatise the sword? No, my lord, for at its blow a giant nation 
sprang from the waters of the Atlantic, and by its redeeming magic 
the fettered colony became a daring free republic. Abhor the sword 
and stigmatise the sword? No, my lord, for it scourged the Dutch 
marauders out of the fine towns of Belgium, back into their own 
phlegmatic swamps, and knocked their flag, and laws, and sceptre, 
and bayonets, into the sluggish waters of the Scheldt. My lord, 
I learnt that it was the right of a nation to govern itself, not in 
this Hall, but upon the ramparts of Ant\verp." 

O'Connell's son, John, who now always represented his father 
in the Repeal Association, arose from his seat on the platform, in- 
terrupting the speaker, and announcing that he could not sit there 
and listen to such sentiments. He would leave the hall and leave 
the Association if such a speech, in flagrant breach of the Associa- 
tion's Constitution, was permitted and approved. 

Rather than have John O'Connell leave the Association that 
had been founded and fostered by his father, Meagher, Mitchell, 
Duffy, O'Brien, Rellly, Father Meehan, and other Young Ireland- 
ers present, got up and walked out — out of the hall and out of the 
Repeal Association. 

Then the Young Irelanders founded the Confederacy — to work 
for Ireland's uplifting — at the very beginning of '47. And the 
two movements, the constitutional and the flagrantly unconstitu- 
tional, went side by side. The Nation had been driven from the 
Repeal reading rooms — which reading rooms, by the way, were 
mainly the fruits of Davis' work — and its circulation for a time 
materially injured. But the enthusiasm of its supporters soon wid- 
ened Its field, and compensated for the injury which the Associa- 
tion had done it. It now grew more militant than ever, with Mit- 
chel ever in a militant lead. 

Very great was the enthusiasm for The Nation throughout 
mountain and valley of all the land. At the cottage firesides, In 
the forge, in the churchyard, at the cross-roads — wherever the old 
men sat, and the young men met — The Nation, the news In The 
Nation, its rousing ballads, Its stirring articles, were the inspiring 
constant theme. Though money was scarce and newspapers dear 
— The Nation costing fivepence — the people In the remotest moun- 



YOUNG IRELAND 595 

tains clubbed their pennies, and paid a smart boy to foot it far over 
the hills each Saturday and bring from distant town the coveted 
paper — which should be read in company on the day of rest. They 
gathered to the house of a farmer famed as a fine reader, 
or of a schoolmaster — oftentimes to the house of the tailor or 
shoemaker, whose smart daughter, seated on a chair on the table, 
read aloud for the delectation of the company the momentous hap- 
penings, the wonderful speeches of the week, the articles, the 
essays, the inspiring ballads. And the company afterwards dis- 
persed, each to carry the great news to the group that waited for 
him at his own fireside. 

Mitchel kept pushing so far ahead militantly of his fellows in 
The Nation group that he eventually parted with them — in Feb- 
ruary '48. He stood for action — and for precipitating action. He 
was impatient of temporising. His fellows on The Nation, and 
the general body of the Confederacy, felt, knew, that Ireland was 
not yet prepared to rise out against the mighty British Empire, 
that their people were neither trained nor equipped. They wanted 
to make the most of the Constitutional policy, at the same time 
that they proceeded with the ripening of the country for ultimate 
revolution, should revolution become necessary. Mitchel felt that 
so-called Constitutionalism had had its trial and failed despicably 
to do other than demoralise the people who used it — and also felt 
that since the famine was mowing down the people in hundreds 
of thousands it was infinitely better for Ireland, and nobler far for 
themselves, to sell their lives for their country than to throw them 
away wititout return — to fall on the field, facing their nation's foe, 
than to wait for the famine to drain their life from them in the 
ditches. 

When he parted with his colleagues upon the matter of policy, 
he founded The United Irishman for purpose of propagating his 
principles. The little paper leaped into instant fame, and in wide- 
spread circulation soon far outstripped The Nation. He had 
Devin Reilly as his active coadjutor. And he had poor faithful 
Clarence Mangan, and "Mary" and "Eva" as his warm supporters 
and steady contributors. He preached open rebellion; and from 
week to week gave instructions in pike practice — which awaked 
such hearty response throughout the country that The Nation 
quickly felt itself called upon to follow suit. 

The French Revolution now burst and quickly established the 
rule of the people in that nation. Europe was rocking with revolu- 
tion. It had got into the people's blood. Their blood rose and 
thoughts of freedom fired their souls. All enslaved ones were 



596 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

bursting their bonds. Ireland was riper than most of them to 
nurture the new spirit. And nurture it Ireland did. The split in 
the Confederacy was closed by the new great dynamic impulse 
which reached Ireland's shores. Mitchel and Reilly again stood 
shoulder to shoulder with their former comrades — all followers of 
Young Ireland throughout the nation became as one. The wish 
to lift a pike or shoulder a gun nerved the young men. And to 
the labourers in the national field prospects were never before so 
promising. The good work strode forward magnificently — and it 
was foreseen that by the time the people had harvested their crops, 
the revolution would be ripe for bursting. '45, '46 and '47 had 
seen the great and progressive potato failure. In '47 the worst of 
all, the nation staggered at the mouth of a pit — not the most fa- 
vourable condition for successful revolution. But things were more 
hopeful in '48. And a good harvest, safely gathered, would leave 
the country fit. The harvest was a necessity for the success of their 
plans. And the time that would elapse before harvest was also a 
necessity for the ripening of the plans, the training and equipping 
of an army. 

'-^'But all this calculation was based on the foolish assumption 
that the British Government would accommodate them by waiting 
their time for rebelling. But the Government was not now grown 
any more accommodating to Irish revolutions and revolutionaries, 
than it had ever been. In the early summer it moved. It arrested 
O'Brien, Meagher and Mitchel on charges of sedition. At the 
trials of O'Brien and Meagher they failed to pack their juries with 
their usual care^-one or two men of independent thought had, in 
each of those cases, been permitted to squeeze into the jury box — 
with the result that convictions could not be obtained. Before try- 
ing Mitchel the Government with its usual ingenuity invented and 
patented a new crime, treason-felony, under which an Irishman who 
uttered any revolutionary idea, was branded a felon, to be classed 
with the most despicable of criminals, and punished by many years' 
transportation. Mitchel was tried under the new Act. Moreover, 
the prosecution took care not to commit the same mistake it had 
made in the trials of O'Brien and Meagher. They did not let on 
the jury a single individual of whose verdict they were not certain. 
No Catholic, no independent-minded Protestant, was permitted in 
the box. Mitchel procured old Robert Holmes, one of the United 
Irish Revolutionaries of half a century before — brother-in-law to 
Robert Emmet — to defend him. Holmes was a ruggedly honest 
Irishman, in whom age had not dulled the edge of resolve, or 
smothered the fire of patriotism. In his youth he had taken the 



YOUNG IRELAND 597 

same bold stand that did John Mitchel now. And after fifty years 
of reflection upon the action of his youth, he now, in the winter of 
his days, stood up with Mitchel, and to the rage of the prosecu- 
tion, and the horror of the court, instead of defending his client 
justified him. He told the judges his opinion and emphasised and 
repeated it^ that Mitchel, statutably guilty, was not morally guilty. 

" 'Jailor, put forward John Mitchel,' said the official, whose duty 
is to make such orders. 

"A grating of bolts, a clanging of chains, were heard. The low 
doorway at the back of the dock opened, and between turnkeys 
Mitchel entered. 

"Ascending the steps to the front of the dock, and lifting, as 
he advanced, the glazed dark cap he wore through his imprisonment, 
as gracefully as if he entered a room, he took his stand in a firm 
but easy attitude. His appearance was equally removed from bravado 
and fear. His features, usually placid and pale, had a rigid clear- 
ness about them that day which we can never forget. They seemed, 
from their transparency and firmness, like some wondrous imagining 
of the artist's chisel, in which the marble, fancying itself human, had 
begun to breathe. The face was calm and bright — the mouth, the 
feature around which danger loves to play — though easy, motion- 
less, and with lips apart, had about it an air of immobility and quiet 
scorn, which was not the effect of muscular action, but of nature in 
repose. And in his whole appearance, features, attitude and look, 
there was a conscious superiority over his opponents, which, though 
unpresuming and urbane, seemed to say louder than words — 'I am 
victor here to-day.' " ^ 

Mitchel, to be sure, for the crime of advocating the freedom 
of his country, was, under British law found guilty of treason-fel- 
ony. And Baron Lefroy, after a hypocritical speech in which he 
said that he was indulging in a leniency which the magnitude of the 
crime did not countenance, sentenced Mitchel to fourteen years' 
transportation beyond the sea ! 

Then the prisoner, facing his judges, spoke — though to those 
present it seemed more like a noble judge in the dock lecturing 
miserable convicts on the bench. He defended his "crime," gloried 
in it, bade them and their laws an audacious defiance, and pre- 
cipitated among his friends in the court such ringing avowal of 
"treason" as never before or since startled an English law court.^ 

2 Doheny's description of Mitchel's arraignment. 

3 " 'The law has now done its part, and the Queen of England, her crown and 
government in Ireland, are secure, pursuant to act of Parliament. I have done my 
part also. Three months ago I promised Lord Clarendon and his government, 



598 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

The Confederates' Club considered the advisability of letting 
the revolution burst, in attempt to rescue Mitchel from his jailers 
before they took him from Dublin. But the proposal was eventu- 
ally and wisely voted down. For, the soldiery on the alert and 
equipped with all the paraphernalia of war, were in command of 
every strategic point; and thousands would have been mown down 
in the streets, and probably the incipient rising smothered in blood, 
had they decided to make the wild attempt. Mitchel himself in his 
Jail Journal reflects upon them for their decision. He considers 

who holds this country for the English, that I would provoke him into his courts 
of justice, as places of this kind are called, and that I would force him publicly 
and notoriously, to pack a jury against me to convict me, or else that I would 
walk a free man out of his court, and provoke him to a contest in another field. 
My lords, I knew that I was setting my life on that cast; but I knew that, in 
either event, victory should be with me — and it is with me. Neither the jury, 
nor the judges, nor any other man in this court presumes to imagine that it is a 
criminal who stands in this dock (murmurs of applause, which the police en- 
deavoured to repress). I have kept my word. I have shown what the law is 
made of in Ireland. I have shown that her Majesty's government sustains itself 
in Ireland by packed juries — by partisan judges — by perjured sheriffs. 

" 'What I have now to add is simply this — I have acted all through this busi- 
ness, from the first, under a strong sense of duty. I do not repent anything I 
have done ; and I believe that the course which I have opened is only commenced. 
The Roman who saw his hand burning to ashes before the tyrant, promised that 
three hundred should follow out his enterprise. Can I not promise for one, for 
two, for three?' He indicated as he spoke. Reilly. Martin, and Meagher. 

"'Promise for mel' 'And me!' 'And me, Mitchell' rose around him in com- 
mingled tones of earnest solemnity, passionate defiance, and fearless devotion, 
from his friends and followers. 

" 'Officer 1 officer ! Remove Mr. Mitchel !' shouted Lef roy. 

"A rush was made on the dock, and the foremost ranks sprang from the gal- 
leries with outstretched hands to vow with him too. The judges fled in terror 
from the benches — the turnkeys seized the hero, and in a scene of wild confusion 
he half walked, was half-dragged from the dock — and disappeared waving his 
hand in farewell. The bolts grated, the gate slammed, and he was seen no more. 

"Men stood in affright, and looked in each other's faces wonderingly. They 
had seen a Roman sacrifice in this modern world and they were mute. 

"An hour elapsed — the excited crowd had passed away; and the partisan 
judges, nervous and ill at ease, ventured upon the bench again. 

"Then Holmes rose to his feet to add his defiance to that of the convict. 
He said : 

" 'I think I had a perfect right to use the language I did yesterday. I now 
wish to state that what I said yesterday as an advocate, I adopt to-day as my own 
opinion. I here avow all I have said, and perhaps under late Act of Parliament, 
her majesty's Attorney-General, if I have violated the law in anything I said, may 
think it his first duty to proceed against me. But I must, with great respect to 
the court, assert that I had a perfect right to state what I stated; and now I say 
in respect to England and her treatment of this country, those are my sentiments, 
and I here openly avow them. The Attorney General is present — 1 retract noth- 
ing — these are my well judged sentiments — these are my opinions as to the relative 
position of England and Ireland ; and if I have, as you seem to insinuate, vio- 
lated the law by stating these things, I now deliberately do so again. Let her 
majesty's attorney-general do his duty to his government, I have done mine to my 
country.' 

"Such was the conclusion of the trial of John Mitchel. The brother-m-law 
and friend of Robert Emmet, the Republican of our father's days, came to attest 
the justice of the republican of our own, and to vie with him in defying and 
scorning, the infamous laws of England." 



YOUNG IRELAND 599 

that bloody slaughter would have been better than acquiescence. 
Under heavy escort, and by a roundabout route, he was secretly 
rushed off and conveyed to a ship which, in the Liffy, waited to 
carry him away. 

John Martin, Mitchel's brother-in-law, a quiet Northern gen- 
tleman farmer, now felt called upon to step into the breach. To 
take the place of the suppressed United Irishman, Martin started 
The Felon. He had the assistance of Devin Reilly and of Fintan 
Lalor, the latter a Tipperary man, strange and lonely of nature, 
with powerful intellect and determination, and almost fanatically 
committed to ideas of land ownership far in advance of his time. 

Another revolutionary paper. The Tribune, was founded by 
Kevin O'Doherty assisted by the poet Richard Dalton Williams. 
So the taking away of The United Irishman was almost compen- 
sated for. The Felon, The Tribune, and The Nation all three now 
worked with a will to rouse and to ripen the country with the har- 
vest. 

But still the English Government would not be accommodating. 
If there must be a revolution it must be forced before it is ready. 
Six weeks after Mitchel was convicted, the Government made a 
great swoop. The editors of all three papers were arrested, and, 
besides, O'Brien and Meagher were sought with warrants. The 
Young Irelanders instantly saw that they must at once strike or be 
struck. Although they knew that the country was not ready — 
neither the harvest ripe, nor the men equipped — they desperately 
resolved upon rising. O'Brien, Meagher, Doheny, O'Gorman, 
Terence Bellew MacManus, Reilly, Dillon and others, spread them- 
selves over the south (chiefly). O'Brien, who was looked to as 
the leader, should give the signal by striking the first blow. 
Through want of preparedness, through O'Brien's exasperating 
punctiliousness about when, where, and how, he would strike the 
blow, and through the active opposition of the clergy* — part of 
whom were in principle against the rising, and part against it be- 
cause circumstances were untoward, the people unprepared, and 
the harvest not gathered — the rising never materialised. O'Brien, 
Meagher, MacManus and others, were run down and arrested — 
while Doheny, Reilly, Dillon, O'Gorman escaped the country after 
long pursuit. 

It was an unfortunate ending to a promising project. The vari- 

■* All of the clergy were not against the movement — evidently not all of the 
Hierarchy either. Bishop Maginn of Derry sent a messenger to Duffy, in prison, 
to say that if the Rising was deferred until the harvest was gathered, he would ' 
take the field himself, and have with him at least twenty officers in black. 



6oo THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

ous accounts of the times, written by the actors themselves, show 
that the people were ripe for revolution — full as anxious to take 
the field as in '98 — more anxious perhaps — even ready and anxious 
to go out unarmed, or with such homemade arms as they could 
procure on short notice. But, disastrous as might have been the 
fool-hardiness of facing the armies of the British Empire with pikes 
and scythes, even that forlorn hope was frustrated by the want of 
carefully prepared plans, unified direction, and a bold leader capa- 
ble of sweeping aside the small considerations, grasping the big 
ones, and acting instantly, and with certitude.'^ 

But consistent with the working of the strange fatality that 
through centuries dogged the steps of Ireland's liberators, the fierce 
desire of the people was not to eventuate in action. 

The captured leaders were put through the usual farcical form 
of trial — found guilty of course — as Smith O'Brien convicted, and 
sentenced, and stepped out of the box put it to Meagher, "Guilty, 
Meagher, of not having sold our country." O'Doherty and Mar- 
tin, whose offence was considered less gross since they had been 
imprisoned before putting in effect their rebellious purpose, were 
sentenced each to ten years' transportation.*' Duffy, over whom a 
jury twice disagreed, was kept in prison a length of time, and 
eventually released because of his failing health. But the leaders 
who had been "out," O'Brien, Meagher, MacManus, and O'Don- 
oghue got the same savage sentence — later commuted to life trans- 

^ Meagher's description of the scene in the httle town of Carrick-on-Suir when 
the news sped that the leaders had arrived "to give the word," well pictures for 
us the tremendous force of the long pent up desire now let loose: "A torrent of 
human beings, rushing through lanes and narrow streets, whirling in dizzy circles, 
and tossing up its dark waves with sounds of wrath, vengeance, and defiance . . . 
eyes red with rage and desperation . . . wild, half-stifled, passionate, frantic 
prayers of hope, curses on the red flag; scornful, exulting defiance of death. It 
was the Revolution, if we had accepted it." 

6 John Martin's speech upon being convicted is too beautiful to be omitted — 
"My lords, I have no imputation to cast upon the bench, neither have I anything 
of unfairness toward myself to charge the jury with. I think the judges desired 
to do their duty fairly, as upright judges and men, and that the twelve men who 
were put into the box, not to try but to convict me, voted honestly according to 
their prejudices. I have no personal enmity against the sheriff, sub-sheriff, or any 
other gentleman connected with the arrangements of the jury panel, nor against 
the attorney general, or any other person engaged in the proceedings called my 
trial. But, my lords, I consider I have not yet been tried 1 There have been cer- 
tain formalities carried on here for three days, but I have not been put upon my 
country, according to the constitution said to exist in Ireland ! 

"Twelve of my countrymen, 'indifferently chosen' have not been put into 
the jury box to try me, but twelve men, who, I believe have been selected by the 
parties who represent the crown, for the purpose of convicting and not of trying me. 

"Every person knows that what I have stated is the fact, and I would repre- 
sent to the judges, most respectfully, that they, as honourable judges, and as up- 
right citizens, ought to see that the administration of justice in this country is 
above suspicion. I have nothing more to say." 



YOUNG IRELAND 6oi 

portation, to Van Diemen's Land — "That sentence is that you, 
William Smith O'Brien, be taken from hence to the place from 
whence you came, and be thence drawn on a hurdle to the place of 
execution, and be there hanged by the neck until you are dead; and 
that afterwards your head shall be severed from your body, and 
your body divided into four quarters, to be disposed of as Her Ma- 
jesty shall think fit. And may the Lord have mercy on your soul." 

And so ended in gloom the short bright chapter of Ireland's 
history written by the gallant Young Irelanders. 

After a period of joyful hope Ireland was prostrate once more 
under the conqueror's heel — to do what he would with. Some of 
the biggest English minds considered it was proper that it should 
be prostrate, that the iron heel should unmercifully be sunk into 
it. The great Carlyle, sad to relate, gave his British mind utter- 
ance on the subject thus, "When a mouse comes in the way of an 
elephant, what must the elephant do? Squelch it." Prime Min- 
ister Peel was evidently of a like mind : for, we are told that he con- 
sidered the idea of another Cromwellian clearance of the trouble- 
some Celt, and a new Plantation. Queen Victoria, in a letter to 
Leopold of Belgium expressed her regret that the Rising had not 
materialised and given chance for the British guns to mow down 
the young men of Ireland — "to teach the Irish a lesson," as the 
gentle lady put it. 

Mitchel's Last Conquest. 
Doheny's Felon's Track 
Gavan Duffy's Young Ireland. 

" " Four Years of Irish Historj'. 



CHAPTER LXX 

THE GREAT FAMINE 

The Great Famine, usually known as the famine of '47, really be- 
gan in '45, with the blighting and failure of the potato crop, the 
people's chief means of sustenance. The loss that year amounted 
to nine million pounds sterling. A worse failure occurred in '46. 
But by far the worst was in '47, when the suffering reached its 
climax. The terrible famine of '47 and '48 proved to be the most 
stunning blow that the Irish nation received in a century. It is 
calculated that about a million people died — either of direct starva- 
tion, or of the diseases introduced by the famine, and about another 
million fled to foreign lands between '46 and '50.^ 

The sufferings caused by the very first blight, that of '45, were 
such that Lord Brougham said: "They surpass anything on the 
page of Thucydides — on the canvass of Poussin — in the dismal 
chant of Dante." It was a catastrophe that demanded the imme- 
diate, energetic, most powerful, help of a country's government. 
And it is interesting to note just how those who insisted on govern- 
ing this country met the terrible crisis. 

Naturally, of course, the first thing that people in power should 
do, for a country facing starvation, was to forbid all export of 
foodstuffs from Ireland. But, as Englishmen, having this source 
of supply cut off, would then have to pay a higher price for their 
corn, the British Government, "could not interfere with the natural 
course of trade." "But," the Viceroy Lord Heytesbury, reassured 
the dying ones, "there is no cause for alarm — the Government is 
carefully watching the course of events!" 

To relieve the acute situation, their first step was to send over 
a shipload of scientists to study the cause of the potato failure. 
Their second step was to bring in a new Coercion Bill for Ireland. 
The third step was — after they had voted two hundred thousand 
pounds to beautify London's Battersea Park — to vote one hundred 

1 The Government returns of emigration for those years are inaccurate. There 
were hundreds of little schooners sailing out of almost every bay on the west 
coast, weighted down with human cargo, of which no record was ever kept. 

602 



THE GREAT FAMINE 603 

thousand pounds for the relief of the two million Irish people (out 
of a total of eight million) who were suffering keen distress — which 
was the handsome help of twelve p ence each person to tide a starv- 
ing population over till the nexTRarvest P jl 

As they were this year unable to pay rack rent to the absentee 
landlord, thousands of the starving ones were thrown out, and 
other thousands threatened to be thrown out of their wretched 
homes, to perish on the roadside. |ln consequence frenzied poor 
men shot a few of the vilest of the land-agents and landlords.// At 
the opening of the Parliament in January, '46, Queen Victoria, ad- 
dressing her "Lords and Gentlemen" observed, with deep regret, 
the fearful situation in Ireland — adding — "It will be our duty to 
consider whether any measure can be devised, calculated to give 
peace and protection for life there." 

The simple reader, who knows not the way of Britain with Ire- 
land, would here naturally come to the conclusion that the tender- 
hearted gentlewoman, full of sympathy for the thousands who were 
dying of starvation, and for the hundreds of thousands who were 
daily in danger of dying, was directing her Parliament to try to 
save a multitude of lives. But this would be a mistaken conclu- 
sion. She was here referring to the handful of Anglo-Irish land- 
lords and agents, whose lives must be solicitously protected whilst, 
in trying times, they were endeavouring to hack and hew their usual 
pound of flesh from the walking skeletons in the bogs and moun- 
tains of Ireland. Some of these thoughtless ones were in danger 
of slaying a landlord rather than see him slay their famished wife, 
or hollow-eyed children. Hence the good Queen advised her 
"Lords and Gentlemen" that a stringent Coercion Bill was needed, 
and must be provided to relieve the unfortunate conditions prevail- 
ing in Ireland.^ 

2 When the Irish Parliamentary representatives presented the claim of their 
suffering country for assistance from the common Exchequer to which their coun- 
try contributed millions every year, the British view of their action was fairly 
well voiced by the London Times: "There would be something highly ludicrous 
in the impudence with which Irish legislators claim English assistance if the cir- 
cumstances by which they enforced their claims were not of the most pitiable 
kind. The contrast between insolent menace and humble supplication reminds one 
forcibly of the Irish characters so popular with the dramatists of the last cen- 
tury who hectored through three acts of intermittent brogue, bullying the husband 
and making love to the wife." 

3 Among other benefits which this excellent Bill proposed to confer upon the 
suffering people, it rendered liable to fourteen years* transportation any one found 
out of his own house after the sun set in the evening and before it arose next 
morning. In the operation of this beneficial Act many things occurred, that to an 
outsider might seem strange. For instance, John Mitchel records such happen- 
ings as that of a quiet, respectable farmer, who on a summer evening, when the 
sun was near setting, strolled a short way down the road to pay his working-m.en, 



6o4 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

In the following year, when the distress grew worse, the Gov- 
ernment granted the Labour Rate Act to Ireland — permitting the 
Irish people to tax themselves to give employment to those of them 
who were worse oft than the others. And over and above this, 
there was contributed from the Imperial Exchequer a hundred thou- 
sand pounds for districts that were too utterly destitute to raise 
any money under the Act. This Act and Government grant ma- 
terially alleviated such polite poverty as existed among the Anglo- 
Irish class in Ireland — going chiefly In salaries to many thousands 
of these people employed as "Commissioners," "Superintendents of 
work," "Inspectors of work," and so forth — a huge staff who were 
paid a large part of the small fund for the purpose of administer- 
ing the little that remained.* 

What did remain was paid In half wages to starving men for 
doing work that was unprofitable. This latter was a specific Gov- 
ernment condition embodied In the Act. The work must be un- 
profitable, non-productive. The money, for Instance, could not 
be used to build Irish railways — because that would be a discrim- 
ination against English railway builders. It could not be used 
either for seeding the lands, or reclaiming the millions of acres of 
bog — because that would be giving the Irish farmer an unfair ad- 

and walking back when the sun had just sunk — though it was still broad day 
light — was arrested for heinous crime against "the Queen and Constitution of 
this realm." At that time the tailor and the shoemaker would, in the late autumn 
and early winter, be taken by the big farmers to their houses, and kept there a 
week, to make shoes and clothes for the family. One of these tailors was arrested, 
on an evening, as he sat at his work in a big farmer's house — where of course he 
was spending his nights as well as his days. The villain had literally transgressed 
British law. He has been "out of his house" between sunset and sunrise! Four- 
teen years' transportation taught this dangerous criminal that British law was made 
to be respected. 

Then, too, the Government was not only alert to guard the sacred rights 
of life — English landlords' lives, but also the sacred rights of property — Eng- 
lish landlords' property. Mitchel, in his "Last Conquest," describes how he 
was called upon to defend poor starving creatures on charges of trespass be- 
cause they had gone down to gather seaweed below high-water mark — and 
poor farmers who were indicted for robbery, because going forth into the sea's 
realm — where Britain decrees that the British landlords' rights reach — they had 
taken limestone from a rock that was uncovered at low-water only, and burnt it 
upon their lands, to try to force a little crop. The Cork Examiner of tliat period 
says : "Our town presents nothing but a moving mass of military and police, 
conveying to and from the court-house crowds of famine culprits. I attended the 
court for a few hours this day. The dock was crowded with the prisoners, not one 
of whom, when called up for trial, was able to support himself in front of the 
dock. The sentence of the court was received by each prisoner with apparent 
satisfaction. Even transportation appeared to many to be a relaxation from their 
sufferings." 

4 In the beginning of '47 there were ten thousand Government servants under 
salary for administering what portion of the relief fund their salaries did not 
consume. "Some of these gentlemen," says Mitchel, "got more pay than an Ameri- 
can Secretary of State." 



THE GREAT FAMINE 605 

vantage over his English brother, and might enable him to under- 
sell the latter in the market. It could only be used — and only was 
used — for such benevolent purpose as cutting down roads where 
there was no hill, filling in roads where there was no hollow, build- 
ing roads where nobody ever travelled — having them start any- 
where and end nowhere — erecting bridges where no rivers flowed, 
and piers where a ship's sail was never seen. There are still to be 
viewed in various parts of Ireland, some of these monuments to 
British Government wisdom, and solicitude — roads that are only 
frequented by the daisy and harebell, and broken bridges and tum- 
ble-down piers that stood in solitude for years, before sinking in 
despair. 

Public committees had been formed in various countries (in- 
cluding England) and hundreds of thousands of pounds were col- 
lected for the relief of Irish distress — even the Sultan of Turkey 
contributing to the starving Irish subjects that the great British 
Government could not afford to care for. With the money thus 
collected, shiploads of Indian corn were imported to Ireland from 
America. As there were in the country hundreds of thousands of 
people in want for food, who yet would not accept it in charity, it 
was proposed that imported corn should be sold to these people at 
reduced price — but the paternal Government forbade the irregular 
procedure. It was not in accordance with the laws of political 
economy, and "there must be no interference with the natural course 
of trade." For the same reason the Government still persistently 
refused to close the Irish ports against export of foodstuffs. And 
it was noted that a ship, laden with relief corn from America, sail- 
ing into an Irish harbour, would meet several ships laden with Irish 
foodstuffs, sailing out! 

At length, when conditions reached their most fearful stage, in 
'47, and that the uncoffined dead were being buried in trenches,^ 
and the world was expressing itself as appalled at the conditions, 
the Government advanced a loan of ten million pounds, one-half 
to be expended on public works, the other half for outdoor relief. 
And this carried with it the helpful proviso that no destitute farmer 
could benefit from that windfall unless he had first given up to the 
landlord all his farm except a quarter of an acre. 

The extent of the want in Ireland, in the spring of '47, can be 

5 Some Poor Law Unions, unable to provide coffins for all who died destitute, 
hit on the expedient of using one coffin with a hinged bottom. Corpses were often 
simply wrapped in straw for burial. Some were buried even without the cover- 
ing of straw. People driving after night sometimes drove over the dead who 
had dropped on the road and there lay unburied. Dogs, pigs, rats, were fre- 
quently found feasting on the neglected dead. 



6o6 THf: STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

judged from the fact that in March there were no less than 730,000 
heads of families engaged on relief works — almost three-quarters 
of a million men, who, for sake of earning about six-pence a day, 
forsook all work upon the land. Thus, the sagacious statesmanship 
of the English ruler in Ireland, sought to relieve want caused by 
shortage of crops, by paying men sixpence a day to refrain from 
raising further crops — and do work that was guaranteed by the 
Government expert not to produce anything for the country's aid. 

But to relieve acute distress among the poor absentee landlords 
in the gambling hells of Europe, the Government gladly contributed 
troops to aid the Absentee's agent and bailiffs in seizing the sheep, 
the cow, the oats, the furniture, of the starving people. Some- 
times to seize the potatoes that had been donated to them to seed 
their land. 

But in these terrible times there were thousands of poor people 
who, having nothing left to seize, were by the landlord thrown out 
with their families on the roadside. These people had two re- 
sources open to them. Having no house of their own to be in be- 
tween sunset and sunrise (for even the workhouses and hospitals 
were long since filled) they could take advantage of the Coercion 
Act, and get transported for their crime. Or, their cases were 
thoughtfully met by the Vagrancy Act which punished by imprison- 
ment with hard labour any one found idly wandering without visible 
means of support.*^ 

As the famine sufferings increased, the Government met the 
more acute situation by proposing a renewal of the Disarming Act, 
increase of police, and several other British remedies. 

True, the Government now shipped in Indian corn. But there 
was more corn went out of the country in one month than the Gov- 
ernment sent in, in a year. And during this time English traders 

^ To some who do not know the quaint ways of Enghsh laws with Irish peo- 
ple this will seem to be a joke. Alas, it is a grim truth. Many of the broken and 
broken-hearted creatures — of the half-million people evicted in one year — were 
sent to the prison stone-piles in punishment for vagrancy. 

In this black year of '47 in which the potato crop failed a third time — a 
total failure this time — in which far more than half a million died of famine 
and of plague begotten by famine, and far more than a quarter million fled the 
country, Larcom (the Government Commissioner) estimated at forty-five million 
pounds the value of the food-crops produced. The greater portion of these crops 
crossed the channel — sold to satisfy the landlord and tax-gatherer. "Travellers 
were often appalled when they came upon some lonely village by the western coast, 
with the people all skeletons on their own hearths. . . . Priests, after going their 
rounds all day, administering Extreme Unction, often themselves went supperless 
to bed." And the Protestant clergy, too, be it noted, worked nobly for the suf- 
ferers. One brave Protestant minister took off his shirt, and put it on a fever 
patient. Some few signally noble-hearted ones among the landlords lived on In- 
dian meal, in order to spare more for the starving — some of whom were eating 
grass and turf. 



THE GREAT FAMINE 607 

were speculating in Irish corn, importing or exporting it, as called 
for by variations in the market. And while tens of thousands were 
dropping dead for want of food, in the fields, and on the roads, 
and in the streets of Irish cities, the shiploads of Irish corn in 
which these traders were speculating were crossing and recrossing 
the Channel, in furtherance of their gamble. It is recorded that, 
in the time of direst need, certain cargoes of corn crossed the Irish 
sea four times ! 

Things had now come to a dreadful pass. And the nation was 
in the throes of despair. Mitchel gives a harrowing account of the 
sights that he then saw on a journey to Galway through the fertile 
centre of a fertile island : 

"We saw sights that will never wholly leave the eyes that be- 
held them, cowering wretches almost naked in the savage weather, 
prowling in turnip fields, and endeavouring to grub up roots which 
had been left, but running to hide as the mailcoach rolled by: groups 
and families, sitting or wandering on the highroad, with failing 
steps, and dim, patient eyes, gazing hopelessly into infinite darkness 
and despair; parties of tall, brawny men, once the flower of Meath 
and Galway, stalking by with a fierce but vacant scowl: as if they 
realised that all this ought not to be, but knew not whom to blame, 
saw none whom they could rend in their wrath. Sometimes, I could 
see, in front of the cottages, little children leaning against a fence 
when the sun shone out — for they could not stand — their limbs 
fleshless, their bodies half-naked, their faces bloated yet wrinkled, 
and of a pale greenish hue — children who would never, it was too 
plain, grow up to be men and women."'' 

^ The Mayo Constitution in the month of March reported: "The land is one 
vast waste: a soul is not to be seen working on the holdings of the poor farmers 
throughout the country: and those who have had the prudence to plough or dig 
the ground are in fear of throwing in the seed." 

The Dublin Evening Mail recorded : "A gentleman travelling from Borris-in- 
Ossory to Kilkenny one bright Spring morning, counts on both sides of the road, 
in a Jistance of twenty-four miles, 'nine men and four ploughs,' occupied in the 
fields ; but sees multitudes of wan labourers, 'beyond the power of computation by 
a mail-car passenger,' labouring to destroy the road he was travelling upon. It 
was 'public work.' " 

A sample report from an agent of a Society which, more than any other, de- 
serves eternal gratitude from Irishmen for the great and noble work it did to 
mitigate the horrors of that horrible time — the Society of Friends — reads : "One 
poor woman whose cabin I had visited said, 'There will be nothing for us but to 
lie down and die.' I tried to give her hope in English aid. But alas 1 her prophecy 
has been too true. Out of a population of two hundred and forty I found thirteen 
already dead from want. Tlie survivors were like walking skeletons — the men 
gaunt and haggard, stamped with the livid mark of hunger, the children crying 
with pain — the women in some of the cabins too weak to stand. All the sheep 
were gone — all the cows — all the poultry killed — only one pig left — the very dogs 
which had barked at me before, had disappeared. No potatoes — no oats." 

An item from a Dublin newspaper of '47 — just a few lines casually set down 



6o8 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Yet the Government and the law of the land were not remain- 
ing idle in this time of terror. Toward the end of that year, when 
hope seemed forever to have fled the country, the English Parlia- 
ment, to meet the exigency, called for another Coercion Act! 

In the summer of '47, when things were very bad indeed, and 
the living were trying — but oftentimes failing — to bury the dead, 
the Government, to relieve the distress, sent sixty agricultural lec- 
turers over the country. Some of those who went into the West, 
came back reporting that they could find no one to lecture to. 
Others who found living people, could not lecture to them because 
there was not going to be any means of putting their wise principles 
into practice. One of the lecturers reports: "It is always the 
same excuse with them. They could not get seed, or anything to 
live on, meantime." Another reports: "All I met told me they 
were going to give up their land, for they had neither food nor 
strength to till it."^ 

In those terrible years the people began flocking from the 
stricken land in tens and hundreds of thousands — to America, and 
to the earth's ends. The little bays of Ireland were floating out 
human cargoes upon the bosom of every tide — till within five years' 
time a million despairing refugees had fled the land." 

in the ordinary way of news — nothing at all startling in a time when people could 
not any more be startled by anything so commonplace — reads: "Upwards of one 
hundred and fifty ass hides have been delivered in Dublin from the County Mayo, 
for exportation to Liverpool. The carcasses, owing to the scarcity of provisions, 
had been used as food." 

8 As a further means of helping the dread situation the Government, through 
its Lord Lieutenant, Lord Clarendon, hired a creature named Birch, publisher of 
a sheet that he called The World, to invent and print the foulest slanders the 
creature's filthy imagination could conceive, about the people's leaders, the Young 
Irelanders — and then gratuitously circulated, his lying sheet. It was only when 
Birch eventually sued his employer, Lord Qarendon, for more wages — black-mail. 
Clarendon called it — that the whole odious transaction came into the light of day. 

^ The great Exodus of the race, which then began, continued thence forward 
till, in a half a century, Ireland, which had almost nine million people in '46, 
lost one-half its population. On this sad subject Ethna Carbery penned her well 
known poem — 

THE PASSING OF THE GAEL 

They are going, going, going from the valleys and the hills, 

They are leaving far behind thera heathery moor and mountain rills. 

All the wealth of hawthorn hedges where the brown thrush sways and thrills. 

They are going, shy-eyed cailius, and lads so straightand tall. 
From the purple peaks of Kerry, from the crags of wild Imaal, 
From the greening plains of Mayo, and the glens of Donegal. 

They are leaving pleasant places, shores with snowy sands outspread; 
Blue and lonely lakes a-stirring when the wind stirs overhead ; 
Tender living hearts that love thera, and the graves of kindred dead. 



THE GREAT FAMINE 609 

And in the famine exodus, thousands and thousands carried 
their load of famine fever with them aboard the little ships, or de- 
veloped famine fever on the voyage. And thousands upon thou- 
sands, fleeing from Ireland, for the Promised Land beyond the 
Sea, never saw that land, but left their bones to whiten on the Ocean 
bed. And still other thousands and thousands reached the Promised 
Land only to see it, and die. 

Along the Canadian shore, to which their little ships came, the 
famine-stricken ones were quarantined in droves, died in piles, and 
in heaps were buried. 

This writer once visited Patridge Island at the mouth of the 
St. John River, in the company of a very old man, a doctor, who 
as a boy saw the "coffin ships" arrive at St. John. He gave har- 
rowing pictures of the appearance of the unfed, unclad creatures, 
who were dumped there by the shipload in those years — some of 
them clad only In straw — and showed the great furrows on the 
island, which mark the trenches wherein myriads were buried. 

Six thousand of these poor creatures perished on Grosse Island, 
In the St. Lawrence — and other many thousands along its banks. 
A report of the Montreal Emigrant Society says: "From Grosse 
Island, the great charnel-house of victimised humanity, up to Port 
Sarnia, and along the borders of our magnificent river, upon the 

They shall carry to the distant land a tear-drop in the eye 
And some shall go uncomforted — their days an endless sigh 
For Kathaleen Ni Houlihan's sad face, until they die. 

Oh, Kathaleen Ni Houlihan, your road's a thorny way, 

And 'tis a faithful soul would walk the flints with you for aye. 

Would walk the sharp and cruel flints until his locks grew grey. 

So some must wander to the East, and some must wander West ; 
Some seek the white wastes of the North, and some a Southern nest; 
Yet never shall they sleep so sweet as on your mother breast. 

Within the city streets, hot, hurried, full of care, 

A sudden dream shall bring them a whiff of Irish air — 

A cool air, faintly-scented, blown soft from otherwhere. 

Oh, the cabins long-deserted! — Olden memories awake — 

Oh, the pleasant, pleasant places! — Hush! the blackbird in the brake! 

Oh, the dear and kindly voices! — Now their hearts are fain to ache. 

They may win a golden store — sure the whins were golden too; 
And no foreign skies hold beauty like the rainy skies they knew ; 
Nor any night-wind cool the brow as did the foggy dew. 

They are going, going, going, and we cannot bid them stay; 

Their fields are now the stranger's, where the stranger's cattle stray. 

Oh! Kathaleen Ni Houlihan, your way's a thorny way! 

— From Ethna Carbery's "The Four Winds of Eirinn." 



6io THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

shores of Lakes Ontario and Erie — wherever the tide of emigra- 
tion has extended — are to be found the final resting places of the 
sons and daughters of Erin, an unbroken chain of graves, where 
repose fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, in one commingled 
heap, without a tear bedewing the soil, or a stone marking the spot. 
Twenty thousand and upwards thus went down to their graves."" 

Of a certain ninety thousand only, of the emigrants to Canada 
in '47, of which accurate account was kept, it is recorded that 6,100 
died on the voyage; 4,100 died on arrival; 5,200 died in hospitals, 
and 1,900 soon died in the towns to which they repaired. 

Here is sample of the reports for a few of the individual ships 
in '47: The Larch, carrying 440 passengers, had 108 deaths; the 
Queen, carrying 493 passengers, had 137 deaths; the Avoti, carry- 
ing 552 passengers, had 236 deaths; the Virginius, carrying 476 
passengers, had 267 deaths. William Henry Smith, an English 
civil engineer, who was employed on public works in Connaught in 
'47, records that on one vessel carrying 600 emigrants not a hundred 
survived. 

And thus was the flower of one of the finest nations on the face 
of the earth in swaths mowed down, and thus in wind-rows did they 
wither from off earth's face — under the aegis of British rule." 

John Mitchel, Last Conquest of Ireland (Perhaps). 
O'Rorke's Histor>' of the Famine. 
The Halliday Pamphlets. 

1° One Englishman with a man's heart, the naturalist, Waterton, travelled 
from Quebec to Montreal on an American steamboat, on which there were five 
hundred Irish emigrants, — and in his "Wanderings" speaks thus beautifully of them : 

"They were going, they hardly knew whither, far away from dear Ireland. 
It made one's heart ache to see them all huddled together, without expectation of 
ever revisiting their native soil. We feared that the sorrow of leaving home for 
ever, the miserable accommodation on board the ship which had brought them 
away, and the tossing of the angry ocean, in a long and dreary voyage, would have 
rendered them callous to good behaviour. But it was quite otherwise. They con- 
ducted themselves with great propriety. Every American on board seemed to 
feel for them. And, then, they were full of wretchedness. Need and oppression 
stared within their eyes ; upon their backs hung ragged misery. The world was 
not their friend. 'Poor dear Ireland.' exclaimed an aged female, as I was talking 
to her, 'I shall never see it any more !' " 

11 It was all for the advancement of civilisation, four wise and humane Eng- 
lish rulers and friends assured us. Their mouthpiece, The London Times, which, 
when the exodus was most pitiful, screamed with delight in one of its editorials. 
"They are going! They are going! The Irish are going with a vengeance. Soon 
a Celt will be as rare in Ireland as a Red Indian on the shores of Manhattan" — 
this, their mouthpiece, comfortably informed the Imperial English world. "Law 
has ridden through Ireland: it has been taught with bayonets, and interpreted 
with ruin. Townships levelled with the ground, straggling columns of exiles, 
workhouses multiplied, and still crowded, express the determination of the legis- 
lature to rescue Ireland from its slovenly old barbarism, and to plant there the 
institutions of this more civilised land." 



CHAPTER LXXI 

THE FENIANS 

When the day of the fiery and forward Young Irelanders had 
passed, the political reactionaries had their day. In 1850 reduc- 
ing the Issue from a national to a mere agrarian one, the Irish 
Tenant Right League was formed, to remedy the farmers' griev- 
ances. With this organisation as their instrument — though It had 
some good men in it, like Lucas, Gray, and even Gavan Duffy mod- 
erated in his Nationalism — and with another known as the Catholic 
Defence Association, the Whigglsh element of the country took 
control of Irish affairs, and the time-servers jostled their way to 
the front. This deplorable state of affairs reached Its climax when 
the Catholic Defence leaders, John Sadleir and William Keogh, 
trusted, honoured, lauded to the skies by both lay and ecclesiastical 
sponsors, and triumphantly contrasted with the base misleaders 
(Young Ireland) of the decade before — duped and betrayed their 
supporters, and sold the people and the cause for political place. 
Sadleir, later found to be a forger and swindler on a gigantic scale, 
fell with a sensational crash, leaving thousands of trusting poor 
Irish people financially ruined — and committed suicide. Keogh 
lived on, thinking that the Judge's ermine which was his price hid 
his shame.^ 

1 Sadleir's price, when he sold out to the British Government, was the Lord- 
ship of the Treasury. Keogh's price was the Solicitor-Generalship. Sadleir was 
an able business man who had made much money. After he was made Lord of 
the Treasury, he soared into the dizziest realms of finance. All his ventures pros- 
pered. Everything he touched turned to gold. He became one of the very great 
ones in the London banking world. But, as his success, extraordinary and dazzling, 
was based upon rottenness and a people's betrayal, God's curse finally brought him 
down. Providence seemed to have helped him to a dizzy pinnacle in order that 
his fall might be the more tremendous. The corruption by which he felt it neces- 
sary to force himself upon the electors of Carlow, after he had betrayed them, 
was the means of setting his feet upon the downward path. Hurriedly upon the 
heels of this exposure, he had to resort to gigantic schemes of forgery, robbery, 
fraud, in vain endeavour to keep from toppling off his pinnacle. But he fell with 
a crash that shook the financial world. And finally a bottle of prussic acid taken 
on Hampstead Heath ended the betrayer's career. 

Keogh, in his great days as joint leader (with Sadleir) of the Irish people, 
had agam and again sworn in the most solemn and impressive manner — calling 
upon the Almighty God to witness his sincerity — that no bribe in the possession of 

611 



6i2 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

But however deeply it be buried, and however long it be covered 
by the snows of misfortune, the germ of nationality never expires 
in Ireland. Now it found its spring and woke again under the sun 
of Fenianism. 

Fenianism began in Ireland at the end of the 'Fifties — and at 
the same time in America. James Stephens, who had been a very 
young man in the '48 movement, and who had since been a tutor 
both in Paris and in Kerry, was the founder and great organiser 
of Fenianism. On St. Patrick's Day, 1858, in a back room in Dub- 
lin, Stephens swore in his friend Thomas Clarke Luby, and Luby 
swore in Stephens.^ 

And from that modest beginning sprang, at first slowly, but 
after a few years with a rapidity that was magical, one of the great- 
est of Irish movements, with far reaching consequences. For, 
though to the near-sighted and superficial the movement seemed to 
end in disastrous failure, the spirit which got rebirth in that little 
back room on that fateful St. Patrick's Day, far from being broken, 
by the so-called Fenian failure has ever since gone steadily march- 
ing onward, and been the motive power behind all various succeed- 
ing national organisations down to the present greatest Irish 
struggle. 

At the same time that it was started in Ireland by Stephens and 
Luby — with Charles Kickham^ and John O'Leary as their co- 

the British Government would or could buy him. From the frequency with which 
he had invoked God to witness the sincerity of his oath, he was nick-named 
"So-help-me-God Keogh." With Sadleir, he sold out at the very first opportunity 
that offered; And he was soon comfortably seated upon the Judges' bench, grin- 
ning at the dupes whom he had betrayed, and glad of the opportunity to send into 
transportation, or on to the gallows, the "foolish" ones who preferred to give 
up their lives in preference to giving up Liberty and Ireland. This scoundrel's 
name became a by-word for rottenness. He lived long to enjoy the place and pelf 
for which he sold his soul, and to be the despised and the scorned of his country- 
men. 

2 The Fenian oath (as quoted* by John O'Leary) ran: 1, A B, do solemnly 
swear, in the presence of Almighty God, that I will do my utmost, at every risk, 
while life lasts, to make Ireland an independent democratic Republic; that I will 
yield implicit obedience, in all things not contrary to the law of God, to the com- 
mands of my superior officers, and that I shall preserve inviolable secrecy re- 
garding all transactions of this secret society that may be confided to me. So 
help me God I Amen. 

Fenianism was more strictly the American title of the movement It was 
John O'Mahony, reader, scholar, poet, who conceived the title "Fenian" for the 
organisation which Stephens in Ireland called the Irish Republican Brotherhood. 
The Fenians, or Fianna, it will be remembered, were the famed national militia, 
commanded by Fionn MacCumhal. The title was at first resisted by O'Mahony's 
friends and followers, but he forced it on them. And it proved to be a happy one. 

3 Kickham, one of the finest, ablest, noblest of the Fenian leaders, and cer- 
tainly the most lovable, is best known to-day as the Irish novelist who wrote the 
finest story of Irish home life, "Knocknagow, or the Homes of Tipperary" — and 



THE FENIANS 613 

workers, John O'Mahoney and Michael Doheny (both of them 
'Forty-elghters also) gave it to America. 

The American movement, from the beginning, affiliated with 
the movement at home. Stephens, immediately after starting the 
movement in Ireland, went to the United States, travelled and suc- 
cessfully spread Fenianism there, collected £600 to carry on the 
work at home, and made O'Mahoney the American head of the 

the writer also who wrote a few of the finest of our ballads. Such as the beau- 
tiful Fenian ballad : 

RORY OF THE HILLS 

"That rake up near the rafters, why leave it there so long? 

Its handle, of the best of ash, is smooth and straight and strong; 

And, mother, will you tell me, why did my father frown 

When to make the hay, in summertime I climbed to take it down ?" 

She looked into her husband's eyes, while her own with light did fill, 

"You'll shortly know the reason, boy !" said Rory of the Hill. 

The midnight moon is lighting up the slopes of Sliav-na-man, — 
Whose foot affrights the startled hares so long before the dawn? 
He stopped just where the Anner's stream winds up the woods, anear, 
Then whistled low and looked around to see the coast was clear. 
The shieling door flew open — in he stepped with right good-will — 
"God save all here and bless your WORK I" said Rory of the Hill. 

Right hearty was the welcome that greeted him, I ween. 

For years gone by he fully proved how well he loved the Green ; 

And there was one amongst them who grasped him by the hand — 

One who through all that weary time roamed on a foreign strand ; 

He brought them news from gallant friends that made their heart-strings thrill — 

"My sowl ! I never doubted tliem !" said Rory of the Hill. 

They sat around the humble board till dawning of the day, 
And yet not song nor shout I heard, no revelers were they ; 
Some brows flushed red with gladness, while some were grimly pale ; 
But pale or red, from out those eyes flashed souls that never quail ! 
"And sing us now about the vow, they swore for to fulfil" — 
"You'll read it yet in history," said Rory of the Hill. 

Next day the asjien handle he took down from where it hung, 

The toothed rake, full scornfully, into the fire he flung; 

And in its stead a shining blade is gleaming once again — 

COh I for a hundred thousand of such weapons and such men!) 

Right soldierly he wielded it, and — going through his drill — 

"Attention — charge — front point — advance !" cried Rory of the Hill. 

She looked at him with woman's pride, with pride and woman's fears ; 

She flew to him, she clung to him, and dried away her tears ; 

He feels her pulse beat truly, while her arras around him twine — 

"Now God be praised for your stout heart, brave little wife of mine." ' 

He swung his first born in the air, while joy his heart did fill — 

"You'll be a FREE MAN yet, my boy!" said Rory of the Hill. 

Oh ! knowledge is a wondrous power, and stronger than the wind ; 

And thrones shall fall, and despots bow, before the might of mind; 

The poet and the orator the heart of man can sway. 

And would to the kind heavens that Wolfe Tone were here to-day 

Yet trust me, friends, dear Ireland's strength— her truest strength is still 

The rough and ready roving boys, like Rory of the Hilll 



6 14 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

movement. Strangely and unfortunately John Mitchel — and with 
him Meagher — refused to have anything to do with the new move- 
ment, which, except for O'Mahoney and Doheny, had to find its 
strength among new men. The same v/as the case at home, where 
Smith O'Brien, Dillon, and others of the Young Irelanders, rest- 
ing on their now fading laurels, fairly set their faces against Fe- 
nianism.* 

Stephens was a singularly strong and dominant character, a 
man who combined intellectual powers with high idealism, extraor- 
dinary self-confidence — which sometimes became intolerant ego- 
tism — and a hypnotic optimism. While he was commonplace as a 
writer and orator, he was great as an organiser, having a mesmeric 
power over men in the intimacy of personal discourse, and a won- 
derful faculty of infecting them with his own extraordinary optim- 
ism, inspiring them with his own extraordinary confidence, and win- 
ning them as enthusiastic disciples, and apostles. Now, especially, 
that he had the American money to finance him, he travelled east 
and west over Ireland, from town to town, from village to village, 
and it might be said, from farm to farm, laying the warp and weft 
of the organisation, winning men by the thousand, and swearing 
them in fealty to Ireland. 

But the movement got its vastest impetus from the funeral of 
MacManus. Terence Bellew MacManus, one of the singularly 
noble and self-sacrificing of the Young Irelanders, sent into penal 
servitude in Australia, escaped therefrom to America, and in '6i 
died in San Francisco — living and dying steadfast and true to his 
principles. The American Fenians, deciding that the body of this 
true man should rest in Irish earth, arranged to bring him home 
and lay him in Glasnevin. The funeral was one great demonstra- 
tion all the way across the American Continent. In New York it 
assumed remarkable proportions. Wonderful was the reception 
given to it in Cork; and thence along the way to Dublin. It was 
not the funeral of a failure going to his grave, but the triumphal 
march of a conqueror coming to his own. The enthusiasm with 
which the triumphal coming of MacManus was hailed, grew and 
swelled across the country. At railway stations through which the 
funeral train passed vast crowds of reverent ones dropped upon 
their knees and prayed, while tears of mingled grief and joy rolled 
down their cheeks. 

♦This strange attitude of many of the Young Ireland leaders was in part at 
least due to the natural jealousy of older leaders, grown stale, against the impetuous 
and virile young ones who come over the horizon threatening to fill the places 
which those elders long had graced. 



THE FENIANS 615 

In Dublin (where the anti-national Archbishop CuUen' had 
closed all his church doors against the remains of the people's idol), 
the climax was reached. During the week that the body lay in the 
Mechanics' Institute, endless thousands of ardent ones, in continu- 
ous hnes filed passed, praying for a patriot who lived and who died 
true to a true Irishman's ideal. And the day on which MacManus 
was to be laid under the earth witnessed such a funeral demonstra- 
tion as perhaps Dublin never knew before or since. Following 
the hearse, through lanes of people numbering hundreds of thou- 
sands, marched fifty thousand men, who thereby consecrated them- 
selves to live, and to strive, and to die as nobly as did he whose 
spirit brooded over and inspired the vast throng. And the great 
silent resolve of the marching myriads found just expression In a 
sentence of Captain Smith's oration at the grave side, *' 'Is there 
any hope?' " he said, quoting a question often asked about Ireland 
by MacManus in his last illness, " 'Is there any hope?' That cof- 
fin speaks of more than hope to-day, for it gives us faith and firm 
resolve to do the work for which MacManus died."*^ 

^ Archbishop Cullen of Dublin banned the body, and blamed the life, of him 
whom Archbishop Hughes of New York only a few weeks before had' blessed. 

Once, Archbishop Cullen, eulogising the British rule to which he commanded 
the docility of the Irish people, said that wherever the British flag floated there 
were to be found Irishmen lifting the standard of the church He intimated that 
England deserved blessing rather than cursing for driving forth the Irish people 
over every country^ of the globe This dispersal of the race was a dispensation 
of God for spreading the Faith. And he evidently desired it to be understood 
that England as the chosen instrument for the dispersal, was deserving of high 
credit I 

^ Thomas Clarke Luby, describing the funeral procession (in O'Leary's Recol- 
lections) says: 

"But I had myself as yet no adequate notion of the magnitude of this un- 
paralleled demonstration. It was only when about to turn into Britain Street that 
I first ventured to look back. Then, indeed, I was over-awed I saw the whole 
ol Gardiner Street filled with dense masses of men, and fresh masses, endlessly 
as it seemed still defiling into it from the direction of Abbey Street. I speak the 
truth when I tell you that I gasped for breath and felt my chest heave; I could 
have sobbed and cried. I felt as I never felt before or since, the grandeur, the 
magnetism, of an immense crowd of human beings, when all are, for the time 
being, gloriously animated with one and the same noble aspiration and convic- 
tion. ... At length the head of the procession reached Thomas Street ; and now 
something truly im.pressive took place Spontaneously, as the foremost files passed 
by Catherine's Church (where Robert Emmet died on the scaffold) every man 
uncovered his head. As slowly the dense black column moves along in funeral 
pomp the generous impulse runs down the entire line. Not a man but passes the 
sacred spot bare-headed. ... I think it is no exaggeration to say that the funeral 
seems to me something in its kind unparalleled, or, at least, only to be compared 
with the second burial of the great Napoleon. But, in the last named pageant, 
the power and resources of a great nation were called into action, while the 
MacManus funeral was the unaided effort of a populace trajnpled on or ex- 
patriated." 

O'Leary himself says that the funeral of Gambetta. organised by a great 
nation, was probably the only funeral which in point of numbers and impressive- 
ness surpassed MacManus's 



6i6 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

That November day in '6i, when MacManus made his last 
journey, was the greatest day for young Fenianism, conquering for 
it the hearts of hundreds of thousands of Irishmen whom, erst- 
while it had not won. 

Unfortunately, the great body of the Irish Bishops, and, in gen- 
eral, of the church in Ireland, conservatively following the CuUen 
lead denounced Fenians and Fenianism, and strove to stifle a move- 
ment which was sweeping Ireland like wildfire, and putting new 
hope in the hearts of the men of the country/ 

The Irish People, the Fenian organ, was founded in '63 with 
John O'Leary as editor — assisted by Charles Kickham and Luby. 
Kickham, by far the finest and ablest writer of them all, did a lion's 
share of the virile writing which quickly popularised the paper. 

The Irish People obtained a large circulation — but not so great 
as did The Nation of Young Ireland days. Its coming, every week, 
was longingly looked forward to by the folk in remote corners of 
the country, who eagerly bought and avidly read and digested it. 
And by its brightness and its virility the spread of the movement 
was vastly accelerated. 

In autumn '65 the Government suddenly delivered a great coup 
— seizing The Irish People, its editors, Stephens, and many of the 
leading figures in the movement in various parts of the country.^ 

This was truly a disaster, removing as it did from the direction 
of the movement some of the wisest heads that guided it. And 
every one of the hundreds of thousands of the rank and file severely 
felt the sad blow — from which indeed the movement never recov- 
ered — even though Stephens was given back to them. 

For Stephens was given back. After defying the court before 
which he was arraigned — announcing to it, "I deliberately and 
conscientiously repudiate the existence of British law in Ireland, 
and I defy and despise any punishment it may inflict on me" — he 
was, with other leading prisoners, confined in Richmond jail — un- 
der special and careful guard. On an evening in November, the 
warders, going their rounds, saw that every man of the Fenian 
prisoners was safe in his cell — locked and double-locked. And 

^ It would be painful to set down here the intenrperate, unpatriotic denunciations 
of Fenianism, by several Bishops and pastors who strove to array both heaven 
and hell on the side of Britain, against Fenianism and Ireland. Enough to record 
Bishop Moriarty's thundering against the Fenian organisers that Hell was not hot 
enough nor Eternity long enough to mete adequate punishment to such miscreants ! 

8 After most of the other leaders were arrested Stephens, while the country 
was being searched for him, continued for more than a month living an easy 
and quiet existence, watering his flowers, and tending his garden, in the outskirts 
of Dublin. 



THE FENIANS 617 

early next morning the prison was in uproar. James Stephens' cell 
was open — and empty! 

There were two tables, one on top of the other, against the 
yard-wall of the prison — and everything else was mystery absolute 
and complete ! Locks had been opened, gates unbarred, walls sur- 
mounted — by a poor prisoner who had no instrument or implement 
left to him in his barred and bolted double-locked cell. The bird 
had flown. His jailers were dazed. The Government was fren- 
zied. England was infuriated. The world was sensated. The 
extraordinary and mysterious escape of Stephens was the sensa- 
tion of the decade.^ 

After remaining quiet for several weeks in a Dublin home, 
while almost every nook and cranny in England, Ireland, Scotland 
and Wales was being searched for him, every railway train and 
every ship and boat, Stephens one day entered a magnificent coach 
drawn by four spanking horses, a liveried driver on the seat and 
liveried foot-men behind (each "flunkey" being an armed Fenian), 
and drove through the streets of Dublin to the sea-coast near Bal- 
briggan, where he entered a boat that took him to a lugger In the 
offing, which in turn bore him safely to France. From thence the 
Chief made his way easily to America. 

The other Fenian leaders were tried in December on a charge 
of high treason — by the usual bitterly biased judges and packed 
juries — found guilty, of course, and sentenced — O'Donovan Rossa 
for life, Kickham, Luby, O'Leary, and the others, to twenty years' 
penal servitude." 

^ Like many mysteries, that of Stephens' escape was, after all, one of the 
simplest. Fenianism had permeated not only every part of the country but also 
every class and every calling — including Government cohorts. The Government 
without knowing it, was placing Fenian prisoners in the hands of Fenian jailers. 
In Richmond jail, a hospitable superintendent, Jno. J. Breslin, and a night watch- 
man, Joseph Byrne, two trusty Fenians, procured duplicate keys and made the 
other arrangements to convey their distinguished prisoner and Chief outside the 
walls. A decade later, Breslin, abroad in America, was a chief man in freeing 
from their Australian penal servitude the Fenian prisoners there. 

The army in Ireland was honey-combed with Fenianism — and the police force 
likewise. The army was so Fenian that many regiments were entirely unreliable 
from the British point of view. Thousands of the men had taken the Fenian oath. 
The work was begun by O'Donovan Rossa who swore in a soldier named Sullivan, 
a native of his own Roscarbery — and this soldier swore in another, and so on. 
But it was the remarkable character. Pagan O'Leary, who, tackling the work 
some months after Rossa had begun it, made the big success of it. John Devoy 
and William Rowantree stepped into the gap and continued the work, when 
O'Leary. betrayed by a soldier at Athlone, was sent into penal servitude. 

10 O'Donovan Rossa got a life sentence because it was his second conviction. 
In '58 he was convicted of treasonable conspiracy in his native Skibbereen. But. 
anyhow, probably his judges would have considered him deserving of a double 
dose, by reason that, having insisted upon conducting his own defence, he gave 
judges, jury, and prosecutors many weary hours. As extracts from The Irish 



6i8 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

The movement had received a staggering blow — from which, 
however, it would have recovered were not further and greater 
misfortunes to follow. The country, eager for action, was disap- 
pointed that Stephens did not give the word in this year. They 
were infinitely more disappointed, discouraged, and embittered 
when, having solemnly pledged himself to give the word next year, 
he failed them again. Among their brethren in America — upon 
whose help great reliance had been placed — impatience gave way 
to criticism, and criticism to dissension. The great majority there 

People were put in evidence against the prisoners, O'Donovan Rossa insisted 
that if any portion of the papers was placed before the Court, every word in 
every paper, for every week of the paper's existence, must be read. When the 
judges and prosecutors gasped at the fearful prospect, he sought to comfort them 
by a generous leniency — he would not insist upon reading the advertisements. 
Before he lifted from their hearts the load of dread he had placed there, he gave 
them upwards of eight hours' straight reading beginning with the first word at 
the top of the left-hand corner of the first number and continuing straight forward, 
conscientiously, without the omission of article or particle 1 

Fearful indeed was the life — the living death, rather — that Irish political 
prisoners had to face in English jails. O'Donovan Rossa, with hands chained be- 
hind his back for weeks together, had to feed himself as a dog would, by lapping 
it up. Michael Davitt tells how, when the keeper was not looking, prisoners 
would snatch a candle end out of the garbage, and save it to feast upon— also, 
how, to get a mouthful of air for which in their vile dungeons they were perishing, 
they would lie down upon the floor and through the crack at the bottom of the 
door, greedily suck in the already vitiated air of the corridor. In '77 O'Connor 
Power, in the House of Commons, demanding inquiry into the horrors to which 
Irish political prisoners were subjected, read a letter from Michael Davitt in 
Dartmoor prison, describing the sufferings of some of his fellow-prisoners there — 
from which is extracted a portion, about one of them: "In June or July 1868, 
Chambers received 'no grounds' as an answer to a petition that he had sent to 
the Secretary of State, begging to be allowed to attend his religious obligations, 
a privilege of which he was deprived, by a 'moral and religious' director for six 
months. At present he is daily driven in and out of chapel by officers brandish- 
ing bludgeons and shouting like cattle drovers. Even in chapel he is not free 
from their rudeness. Dozens of times those officers have stripped him naked in 
presence of thieves and subjected him to insults too disgusting to describe. He 
is made to open his clothes five times a day while an officer feels over his body. 
He has been several times separated from other political prisoners — although our 
being together was within the rules— and forced to associate with picked ruffians. 
He has been for six months in constant contact with lunatics. He has been 
forced to mop up filthy dens of dirt with a small piece of rag, to carry a portable 
water-closet on the public road and across the fields for the use of common male- 
factors. He has often been sick, but, except on a few occasions, was not taken 
to hospital. On one occasion he was sent to the dungeons for applying for re- 
lief after he had met with a severe hurt by falling from the gangway of a build- 
ing. Last year while laid up with rheumatism, they kept him sixteen days on 
ten ounces of food daily, two months on half diet, and then put him out of hos- 
pital far worse than when he was taken in. He is weekly forced to act as char- 
woman to a lot of dirty creatures. He has had punishment diet (16 ounces of 
bread and water), penal class diet, and dungeons— dark, wet, cold and dirty in 
abundance. A smile, a movement of the lips— ay, even a glance of the eye— is 
often deemed a crime in Dartmoor. We have been frequently insulted by thieves 
and ev€n struck by them. Chambers has been held by one jailer while another 
jailer was ill-using him. Worthy sons of worthy sires who once shot down the 
poor prisoners of war herel" 



THE FENIANS 619 

set aside O'Mahony and Stephens, and their too long delayed (im- 
possible) plan of invading Ireland, and chose Colonel Roberts for 
their leader, and an invasion of Canada for their plan. 

The invasion of Canada, which would undoubtedly have been 
a successful move, and a severe blow to England, was stopped by 
the unexpected action of the American Government, which, having 
tacitly encouraged the scheme, and permitted the plans to be ripened, 
stepped in at the last moment to prevent it. 

The American Government sold to the Fenians vast quantities 
of ammunition and other military supplies, winked at the gather- 
ing of the Fenian hosts from all corners of the country, and even 
permitted the crossing of the border (near Buffalo) by General 
John O'Neill at the head of the first body of Fenian soldiers. 
From over the British Fort Erie O'Neill hauled down the English 
colours and ran up the Irish, on the 31st May, ^S. 

And next morning, at Ridgeway, he encountered the enemy in 
numbers far superior to his own force, disastrously routed them, 
capturing standards and large supplies — to the frantic joy of the 
Irish race throughout the world. It was then that America stepped 
in, forbidding the passage of any more Fenian forces over the bor- 
der, and completely cutting off O'Neill's supplies — thus stopping 
his victorious career, and compelling him to fall back upon Amer- 
ican soil — where he and his forces were placed under technical ar- 
rest — and the ambitious scheme ended. 

In Ireland, where Stephens had been superseded by Colonel 
John Kelly, the Rising, arranged for March 5th, '67, was frus- 
trated by a combination of circumstances. The informer, Cory- 
don, betrayed the plans; and, strangely, a great snow storm, one 
of the wildest and most protracted, with which the country was 
ever visited, beginning on the night of March 6th and abating not 
for twelve days and twelve nights, made absolutely impossible not 
only all communications, but all movements of men. 

One of the greatest Irish movements of the century ended ap- 
parently in complete failure. Apparently only, for though there 
was not success of arms, other kinds of success began to show im- 
mediately. Within two years after, that terrible incubus upon Ire- 
land, the Established (English) Church was disestablished, and 
within three years the first Land Act of the century, the Act of 
'70, was made law. And Prime Minister Gladstone afterwards 
confessed that it was the healthy fear instilled in him by the aston- 
ishing spirit of the Fenian movement, v/hich forced him to these 
actions. 



620 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Moreover, the spirit begotten by Fenianism went forward, for 
future triumph. 

John O'Leary, Recollections of Fenians and Fenianism. 
Joseph Deneiffe, Personal Narrative. 
A. M. Sullivan's New Ireland. 



CHAPTER LXXII 

CHARLES STP:WART PARNELL 

From i 865-1 870 the English Courts In Ireland were kept busy 
with the trial of the Fenian Prisoners. Courts-martial were also 
working at high pressure dealing with alleged sedition on the part 
of Irish soldiers. The barrack yards of Dublin ran red with the 
blood, and re-echoed the shrieks, of soldiers condemned to the lash. 
In many cases with all the breath left in their mangled bodies, these 
soldiers, after their inhuman torture raised a cheer for Ireland. 
The leading counsel for the defence of the prisoners was Isaac 
Butt, Q. C, one of the most able and eloquent lawyers at the Bar. 
In this capacity Butt had exceptional opportunities of learning a 
great deal about the ideals of the Fenians. He saw that they were 
men who had taken risks, and who were prepared to take punish- 
ment, be it the scaffold or the cell. He found none of them pre- 
pared for compromise, cowardice or surrender. The result was 
that the Tory M. P. for Trinity College, honest man that he was, 
became an advocate of the cause of Irish Independence. 

True, Butt's definition of independence was not that of the 
Fenians. He invented a new term "Home Rule." The first meet- 
ing of the "Home Government Association," afterwards re-named 
the "Home Rule League," was held in a Dublin hotel in 1870. A 
resolution was passed "that the true remedy for the evils of Ire- 
land is the establishment of an Irish Parliament with full control 
over our domestic affairs." Vague enough, in sooth, but probably 
as strong as Butt dared to make it in an assemblage comprised of 
landlords, Tories, "moderate" Nationalists, and some Fenians. — 
the latter being present chiefly to take notes. The old demand for 
Repeal of the Union was dropped, and the demand for "Home 
Rule" — which might mean anything — took its place. Probably 
Butt could not have done better in the circumstances, and his action 
must be judged by his circumstances. It was not then as clear as 
it now is that one of the chief devices for the consolidation of Brit- 
ish power in Ireland is the exploitation of what is known as "mod- 
erate opinion." 

621 



622 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

In 1874 came a General Election, and to the surprise of the 
'nation the Home Rulers carried thirty-nine seats, and later four 
Fenians were returned. The bulk of the members of "the Party," 
however, were Home Rulers in name, using their position for their 
own ends, pledged to vote right on Home Rule motions, but other- 
wise free to follow their own sweet will. 

Charles Stewart Parnell was the squire of Avondale, County 
Wicklow. He was, on the paternal side, of English descent, one 
of his ancestors having purchased the Avondale property in the 
reign of Charles the Second. His great-grandfather was Sir 
John Parnell, Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer, who forfeited his 
position rather than vote for the Union. The poet, Thomas Par- 
nell, was of his family. His mother was the daughter of Commo- 
dore Stewart of the U. S. Navy. During the war with England 
in the beginning of the nineteenth century the Commodore mar- 
ried, and almost immediately was detailed for active service. 
"What present shall I bring you home?" he asked his bride. Her 
reply was, "A British Frigate." "I shall bring you two," he said, 
— and he did. The mother of Charles Stewart Parnell hated Eng- 
land and the English and was probably a potent influence in de- 
termining his career and outlook on life. 

Parnell \yas educated in English schools, finishing at the Uni- 
versity of Cambridge. He gained some repute as a mathemati- 
cian, but, generally speaking, he was neither very brilliant nor very 
assiduous. He left Cambridge without a degree, and not of his 
own volition. His biographers pass over the matter lightly — they 
generally refer to it as an ordinary Town and Gown row. His 
sister, Mrs. Monroe Dickinson, is more explicit. In "A Patriot's 
Mistake" she clearly brings out that Parnell, aged nineteen, had 
engaged the affections of a young girl in the neighbourhood, who 
was subsequently found drowned. Parnell was distracted over the 
affair, and only the care of his estate and his hunting saved him 
from a nervous collapse. His father, by his will, had made him 
master of Avondale, excluding his elder brother, John Howard, 
who was given the portion of a younger son. The explanation of 
this seems to be that Parnell's father was under the impression that 
John Howard was to be his uncle's heir, and, therefore, had al- 
lotted Avondale to Charles Stewart. John went to America, and 
was there visited by Charles Stewart, who promptly fell in love 
with a reigning beauty who had society at her feet. Tiring of 
American life she left for Rome. Parnell followed her, proposed 
and was accepted. Then one day she told him she could not marry 
him as "he had no name." "No name," exclaimed Parnell, "why 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 623 

I have one of the oldest in Ireland." The beauty explained that 
she wanted to marry a self-made man who had made his mark — 
"not a rusty old Irish name." Parnell promised to make a name, 
on condition that she married him when he had done so. He made 
his name, laid it at the feet of his beloved; in a short space she was 
married to another. 

"He came forth," says his sister, "strengthened and ennobled 
by the fiery ordeal. . . . Thus, Ireland, for the devotion and sac- 
rifice of Charles's life . . . had to thank the faithlessness and 
fickleness of a woman." "The work," continues Mrs. Dickinson, 
"which he had first undertaken for love of a woman he afterwards 
continued with unabated ardour from patriotic feeling." 

To get elected to Parliament, he made two trials — one in Wick- 
low, another in Dublin, and was on both occasions defeated. Then 
in 1875 he replaced John Martin in Meath. He was regarded as 
a nice, gentlemanly fellow, who would create no sensation in the 
House of Commons, — who might make one speech, but never an- 
other. 

The night that Parnell took his seat at Westminster h*e noted 
that there were two policies operating. One was that of Butt, who 
addressed the House of Commons as he might an impartial jury in 
the Four Courts, Dublin. Parnell missed the impartial jury. 
There was no such thing in the House of Commons, where every- 
thing seemed to be regulated by party interests. The other was 
that of Joseph Giles Biggar — called "Joe" — and this was to out- 
rage the House of Commons in every possible way. It so hap- 
pened that on the very night of Parnell's entry "Joe" had been told 
off to obstruct a coercion bill. He did. He was not a man of 
words, but he had provided himself with a copious stock of litera- 
ture — Government Blue-books, newspapers and documents of all 
kinds from which he read extracts until he had thoroughly ex- 
hausted the patience of the House. The Speaker at his wit's end, 
at length declared that the orator was no longer heard at the chair. 
"Joe" declared that he was sorry that his ordinary position in the 
House placed him at a disadvantage, but, with permission, he would 
move up nearer to the chair. He then moved his file of documents 
up to the table and read from them for four hours in a tone and 
accent that might possibly be intelligible, even attractive in Belfast, 
but certainly not elsewhere. 

Parnell remained a while a spectator, not quite sure which 
course to pursue. After consideration he decided to adopt Big- 
gar's. But Parnell's obstruction was of a new brand. It was not 
just wanton like Biggar's ; it was scientific. The system was this : 



624 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

propose an amendment to practically every clause of every measure 
introduced by the Government, and then discuss each amendment 
fully, his friends forming relays to keep the discussion going. But 
Pamell could hardly ever be accused of deliberate obstruction. 
His amendments were generally worth consideration on their merits. 
Thus, he put an end to flogging in the British Army. He gained 
his end of obstructing the business of the House of Commons by 
amendments admittedly reasonable. In 1877 Isaac Butt was called 
into the House to reprove Pamell. He did so. Parnell disposed 
of him in one short sentence. Pamell and Butt were obviously 
coming to blows. 

And the blows were going to be hard ones for Butt. Parnell 
intimated to his adherents that if he was to be of any use in Parlia- 
ment something striking should be done. The hint was promptly 
taken. On September ist, 1877, the Home Rule Federation of 
Great Britain held their annual meeting at Liverpool. Parnell was 
elected president instead of Butt. Butt was annoyed and made no 
secret of the fact. Everybody felt for him but in politics sym- 
pathy has no place. Parnell, an onlooker says, was there "looking 
like a piece of granite." 

To understand the rise of Parnell to power and fame, certain 
popular misconceptions have to be removed. From the literature 
which has grown up about him it might be inferred that he was a 
poor speaker. While he was never an orator in the accepted sense 
of the word, while he was not a ready speaker, and often had 
trouble in finding the word that exactly expressed his meaning, he 
waited till he had found it, and then it was evident to his hearers 
that his hesitation was justified. He was never very keen on speak- 
ing, but when he had to speak he spoke in telling, and often in 
memorable phrases which sunk into the public mind and which are 
still on men's lips as part of the gospel of nationality. He was not 
a very original man; he often borrowed the ideas of others after 
due consideration; but once started on a certain line of action he 
worked to his goal with dogged persistence. Thus, the idea of 
obstruction did not originate in the brain of the most skilful of all 
the obstructionists; it was the suggestion of Joseph Ronayne of 
Cork and was already being operated by Biggar, when Parnell en- 
tered Parliament. He was a thoughtful rather than a learned man. 
But he was not ignorant and had a good knowledge of what inter- 
ested him. His biographer, Mr. Barry O'Brien, records the opin- 
ion formed of him by careful and critical observers. The most 
remarkable thing about him was his silence. He let others do 
the talking. His main object was to unite all elements — Fenians, 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 625 

Constitutionalists, Clerics — all, in one grand rally for Ireland. He 
did not think that the struggle on constitutional, lines could be a 
long one. It was to be "short, sharp and decisive." "Ireland," 
he said, "cannot afford to lose the services of a single man." 

In 1880 — after Mr. Shaw had temporarily succeeded Butt — 
he was elected leader of the Irish Party. Explanations of his rise 
to power are somewhat contradictory. There were clever men in 
the Party — orators like A. M. Sullivan, business-men like Thomas 
Sexton, literary men like Justin McCarthy. There are two words 
common to all explanations of his selection — character and per- 
sonality. 

Parnell had only a limited belief in the efficiency of parliamen- 
tarianism. He was of opinion that without a well organised pub- 
lic opinion in Ireland his power in Parliament would be slight. He 
publicly advised the Irish people to keep a keen watch on the con- 
duct of their representatives in the House of Commons. He pub- 
licly stated that long association with the House of Commons would 
destroy the integrity of any Irish Party. He saw nothing but dis- 
aster in the policy of conciliating the English. "We will never gain 
anything from England," he said, "unless we tread on her toes; we 
will never gain a sixpenny worth from her by conciliation." 

Parnell's wish for an energetic movement at home was gratified 
in an unexpected manner. Michael Davitt was released from 
prison on the 19th December, 1877, on "ticket of leave" after serv- 
ing seven years and seven months of a fifteen year sentence for 
Fenianism. Parnell and others met Davitt and his .fellow-pris- 
oners, Sergeant McCarthy, Chambers and O'Brien, at Kingstown, 
and on a later date entertained them to breakfast at Morrison's 
Hotel, Dublin. The rejoicing natural to such an occasion came 
to a tragic termination. Poor McCarthy had a wife and children 
down south to whom he was passionately attached and from whom 
he had been separated by an informer who had gained his con- 
fidence while enjoying his hospitality and playing with his little chil- 
dren. He was never to enjoy their embraces again. His heart 
collapsed and he died in Davitt's arms. He had taken the patriot's 
risk and consummated the patriot's sacrifice. 

The name of Michael Davitt brings up the Land Question. 
Even in Ireland, to-day, it is difficult to understand the condition 
of affairs in bygone days. The Landlord was "the master." He 
could raise rents at will, he could evict, whether rent was paid or 
not; if the tenant improved his holding he could be taxed for doing 
so — the rent went up — if he defended the chastity of, his daughters, 
or they did so, he was liable to eviction. The landlord owned his 



626 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

tenant, and his tenant's land, and his tenant's vote, and, as he 
thought, sometimes even his tenant's women-folk/ Michael Davitt 
had good reason to know the conditions of land tenure in Ireland. 
At the age of five years he was thrown with his father, mother and 
two sisters on the roadside, and their little home, before their eyes, 
razed to the ground. The father was a hard-working, intelligent 
man who, having somehow survived the famine, and was hoping 
for a little comfort, was flung with his wife and babes on the 
world's highway while the landlord took over the fruit of years of 
toil without a cent of compensation. In time he crossed with his 
family to Lancashire and obtained employment as an Insurance 
Agent. Michael, while only a child, was sent to work in a mill. 
One day, when he was about twelve, he was told off to work on a 
machine which he was too young and inexperienced to manage. 
He protested, but in vain. His overseer thought more of output 
than of the danger to life or limb of an operative, and young 
Davitt was roughly hurled to his task. Soon his right arm got en- 
tangled in the machinery and was so severely injured that it had 
to be amputated. It can be imagined that he had very little school- 
ing, but he was a bright, industrious lad, who, though self-taught, 
developed into an able writer, and an acute thinker with a good 
store of ready information. At an early age he joined the Irish 
Republican Brotherhood, but escaped the fate of so many of his 
comrades in the "Black Assize" of the later .sixties. His turn 
came in 1870. He was an arms agent for the Irish Republican 
Brotherhood in the guise of a commercial traveller, and was caught 
in the toils by the too great secrecy of a fellow conspirator. A 
"centre" in Waterford was apprised of a consignment of arms to 
his order, and he alone knew the way the material was to be sent. 
He took fever and died. In the goods depot at Waterford was a 
box which was "to be kept till called for," but as time passed and 
no call was coming, the baggage-master, an ex-policeman, opened 
the box and informed the British Government of its contents. The 
arms were traced to a Birmingham manufacturer, Mr. Wilson. 
Davitt and Wilson were arrested. Davitt was sentenced to fifteen 
years' penal servitude, Wilson to seven years. Davitt, with true 

1 An old neighbour of my own told me that he was evicted from the land he 
and his fathers held, in return for which was given a piece of bog-land ; that 
often when he opened the door of the cabin in which I found him the snipe and 
wild duck took wing from before his door. When, by the sweat of his brow, he 
had made something like land of the bog-holding, the landlord made him pay rent 
for it. He was fool enough to do so — with money obtained from relatives in 
America. One Christmas night, after paying the landlord, with money earned in 
another continent, his wife and children and himself sat hungry by the fireside. 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 627 

Irish pluck, asked to be allowed to serve both sentences. The re- 
quest was not unnaturally refused, Wilson must have known where 
the arms were going. He was an Englishman and should have 
been as loyal to his country as Davitt to his own. But note the 
difference in the sentences! If Wilson was a traitor to England 
his crime was greater than that of Davitt. If not, he should have 
been acquitted. When Davitt emerged from prison there were 
various conjectures as to his future course of action. Of course, 
he rejoined the Fenians, but his object now was the conjunction of 
all bodies, Fenian and Home Ruler in a struggle to assert that the 
land of Ireland belonged to the Irish people. Landlordism should 
go for ever. 

"But," said the extremist group, "make the farmers secure and 
they will throw over the National Movement altogether." "No I" 
said Davitt, and time has proved him right. The farmers of Ire- 
land, fortunately, under better conditions, have not grown selfish. 
They were selfish only when they were fighting for their lives. In 
1878 Davitt sailed for America where his mother now resided. 
He took up the Irish problem with the leaders of the advanced 
party. John Devoy, the Fenian leader, agreed with his policy, 
while Kickham and the great majority of the leaders opposed what 
had come to be called "the new departure." Finally, however, in- 
dividual officers of the advanced organisation were left free to use 
their discretion. Devoy and Davitt came to Ireland, they met 
Parnell, who characteristically came to no terms, neither praised 
nor dispraised the revolutionary movement, but asked to be let 
alone to see what he could get out of the parliamentary machine, 
while admitting that the advanced party had a right to try out their 
own devices. 

During the years ^jS-yg the distress of the Irish tenantry 
touched the line of famine. The rents were not reduced. The 
landlord demanded payment for land which the land never earned. 
England's Parliament would do nothing to remedy matters. Every 
motion in that direction was rejected with scorn. Between 1870 
and 1876 fourteen attempts to amend the Land Laws failed. 
What wonder that the Irish people got restive. By 1876 their 
patience was giving out. That year a land agent was shot at in 
County Cork. The shot, unfortunately, hit his driver. Joe Big- 
gar afterwards remarked that he disapproved of shooting at land- 
lords because innocent people were sometimes shot by accident. 
In 1878 Lord Leitrim, whose reputation for rack-renting — and 
worse — was notorious, was shot in Donegal. Donegal men were 
jealous of their women's honour. His slayers were never dis- 



628 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

covered, though the whole population was supposed to know who 
they were. 

Rack-renting, however, went on, even for land that was literally 
the product of the tenant's labour. The evicted tenant who made 
his home on a strip of waste bog was rented, when with the sweat 
of his bones, he had converted it into land so called. 

Mayo was one of the worst counties in respect of rack-rent and 
evictions. In Mayo, therefore, it was proper that the first organ- 
ised assault on landlordism should be made. One Walter Burke 
bought a small estate, doubled the rent and put a fine of half a 
year's rent on the tenants. The terms were : pay or quit. Mr. 
Burke died, and his executor was the Reverend Canon Burke. The 
exaction of the last farthing of rent and arrears from the unfor- 
tunate tenants was insisted on. This was the case with which 
Michael Davitt chose to open his campaign. A great public meet- 
ing was held at Irishtown, organised by P. W. Nally and other 
Mayo men, and addressed by Thomas Brennan of Dublin, O'Con- 
nor Power, John Ferguson of Glasgow and others. 

The keynote of the speech was "the land for the people." The 
speakers in advocating peasant proprietary broke away notably 
from the more moderate land policy of Butt, "the three F's," viz.: 
Fixity of Tenure, Fair Rents, and Free Sale. A land revolution 
was in progress. The meeting was unprecedented. Seven thou- 
sand people were present; five hundred men on horseback acted 
as the bodyguard of the speakers. An immediate sequel was that 
the rents were reduced by twenty-five per cent. The Land Act of 
1 88 1 reduced them by a further forty per cent. What must they 
have been before 1879! 

Parnell was, naturally, interested in this new movement. Here 
was a purely social revolution independent of parliamentary effort. 
He foresaw great risks. If he identified himself with the new 
agitation certain things would happen for which he would be held 
responsible. Butt had already warned him against the dangers 
latent in widespread organisations. He decided, however, to take 
the risk. He agreed to speak at a meeting in Westport. The risk 
was even greater than he had foreseen. The meeting — and the 
movement generally — were condemned by no less a man than John 
MacHale, Archbishop of Tuam, whose patriotism and public spirit 
none dared question. Parnell was not abashed. He had prom- 
ised to attend and attend he would. That personal pride, which 
had such a part in his making and his undoing, sustained him. He 
attended. He spoke a few memorable sentences in his own pecu- 
liarly lucid style. 



CHARLES STEWART PARNELL 629 

"A fair rent is a rent the tenant can pay according to the times, 
but in bad times a tenant cannot be expected to pay as much as he 
did in good times. ... If such rents are insisted on . . . what 
must we do in order to induce the landlords to see the position? 
You must show them that you intend to hold a firm grip of your 
homesteads and lands. . . ." 

That phrase stuck. "Hold a firm grip of your homesteads" 
became a rallying cry. Mayo was ablaze. The year 1879 vi- 
talised the tenants. The crop of 1879 was a failure. Parnell's 
declaration was translated into "No Rent." Meeting succeeded 
meeting. There was a particularly successful one at Milltown, 
County Galway. The speeches were fairly violent. A question in 
regard to them was asked in the London House of Commons. 
Mr. James Lowther, then Tory Chief Secretary for Ireland, re- 
plied. He was inclined to be facetious. This is part of his reply: 
"One of the resolutions proposed at the meeting was moved by a 
clerk in a commercial house in Dublin (Mr. Brennan), and sec- 
onded by a person who was described as a discharged school-master 
(Mr. M. O'Sullivan). Another resolution was moved by a con- 
vict at large on ticket-of-leave (Mr. Davitt), (loud laughter and 
cheers), and the same resolution was seconded by a person who 
was stated to be the representative of a local newspaper." (Mr. 
James Daly.) 

That was the spirit in which the English Government of the 
day regarded the land agitation in Ireland. The insinuation is 
obvious. The farmers were not in the movement at all: the whole 
thing was the work of landless agitators, criminals, and journalists. 
Mr. Lowther's jibes soon came home to roost. The "National 
Land League" was established at Castlebar. The imminent dan- 
ger of famine supplied the movement with m^omentum. Two 
American journals, the Irish JVorld edited by Patrick Ford, and 
the Boston Pilot edited by John Boyle O'Reilly, enlisted American 
sympathy and financial support. John Devoy granted aid from 
what was known as the "skirmishing fund," a collection in aid of 
revolutionary action against England, but Davitt paid all the money 
back when it had served its purpose. 

Parnell finally agreed to recognise the "National Land League," 
and to become its president. Mr. Davitt, A. J. Kettle and Thomas 
Brennan were appointed honorary secretaries. Mr. Biggar, Pat- 
rick Egan and W. H. Sullivan were appointed treasurers. Parnell 
entered into no compact. He did not interfere in the plans of the 
Irish Republican Brotherhood, neither did he give himself away. 
He had espoused Parliamentarianism and was determined to see 



630 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

what could be got out of it. Any outside help was all to the good. 
On Sunday, November 2nd, a great meeting was held at Gur- 
teen, County Sligo. Davitt was there and John Dillon, Mr. Daly 
of Castlebar, Mr. Killeen, a Belfast Barrister, and others. There 
was also a Government reporter. Davitt, Daly, and Killeen were 
immediately lodged in Sligo jail. Parnell at once got active. He 
organised a great meeting of protest for the Rotunda, Dublin. He 
went down himself to Balla in the County Mayo, and addressed a 
great meeting there in connection with a threatened eviction, and 
was certainly as seditious as the others. Meanwhile, Davitt and 
his companions were returned for trial in Sligo. 



CHAPTER LXXIII 

THE LAND STRUGGLE BEGINS 

Davitt and his compatriots were duly arraigned in Sllgo, The 
trial was a prolonged political meeting, with brass bands, fiery 
speeches, processions, and every manner of demonstration. The 
traversers were ordered to attend the Assizes in Carrick-on- 
Shannon. They turned up the day before their trial and held a 
public meeting at which they repeated all the language for which 
they were indicted. The trials were removed to Dublin, and sub- 
sequently dropped. For the moment the League had won, 

Parnell and Dillon, having postponed their visit for the trials, 
set sail for America from Cove on the 27th December, 1879. 
They had a fine reception everywhere, and Parnell had the unusual 
distinction of addressing Congress, and delivered a cogent and 
striking address. Meanwhile relief money was coming from 
America and from other sources. The landlords ignored the dis- 
tress. They wanted their rents, whether the land earned them or 
not. The League was just as determined. No process-server 
could travel without drawing a crowd; evicted families were a 
charge on the funds of the League; If a farm was evicted nobody 
dared to take it; if anybody did he was unfit for social intercourse; 
finally the League decided to defend cases In the English courts, 
thus piling expense on the landlord. 

The first big battle with the process-server occurred at Car- 
raroe. County Galway, on January ist, 1880. The processes for 
the forthcoming sessions should be served before January 6th. 
The parties affected and their neighbours had made up their minds 
that they should not. Carraroe is in the heart of South Conne- 
mara where from any point of vantage nothing but moor and 
granite strikes the eye. Cuan an Fhir Mhoir (Great Man's Bay) 
divides this region into a number of islands now joined by the road, 
the creeks being so narrow that It Is only gradually the traveller 
becomes aware of the fact that he Is crossing from island to Island. 
Not a tree or shrub relieves the desolation which is emphasised by 
the gaunt telegraph poles along the white winding road which links 
up the islands. As might be expected, the bulk of the populace — 
mostly the descendants of people who in former days took refuge 

631 



632 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

from British extermination in this remote hinterland — are miser- 
ably poor. Their plight is a blot on the administration of any 
government of a civilised country. 

A tenant's son in Carraroe made up his mind to marry without 
consulting the landlord or his agent. The rent of the holding was 
raised five pounds as a fine. Two sons of another tenant got mar- 
ried and were allotted an outhouse to live in. With perfect con- 
sistency the fine in this case was ten pounds. Another tenant — 
Andrew Conneely — paying five pounds a year had his rent doubled. 
His brother who had an adjoining holding was, through adverse 
circumstances, a defaulter for one year's rent; Andrew got the op- 
tion of paying his brother's ten pounds in addition to his own or 
of being evicted. These and many other hardships, combined with 
bad harvests, maddened the flannel-coated men and women of Con- 
nemara to revolt. 

Roads were cut up, barricades raised, and men, women and 
children massed. The process-server emerged from the barrack 
and the first intended victim was a Mrs. Maickle. As the oflUcial 
approached her house with his escort he was assailed by the women 
and children, his "process" was torn up, and he was in danger of 
bodily hurt. The "force" approached Mrs. Maickle's, who had 
prepared for them a big burning turf with which she hit the Dis- 
trict Inspector of Police. A bayonet charge followed; many 
women and children were wounded; the men, who had up to now 
been spectators, joined in the fray, and the police were routed. 
This was on Friday. Extra forces were called In, totalling finally 
about two hundred and fifty. The people also exerted themselves, 
and on Monday some two thousand men were assembled, with 
others near by in reserve. The police were in a trap. Had they 
persisted in their eftort to enable the process-server to deliver his 
notices the bridges would have been cut and return to their head- 
quarters would have been Impossible. Armed with weapons of 
precision, they might have done considerable slaughter of the un- 
armed peasantry before being annihilated, but, fortunately, matters 
were not forced to a bloody issue. While the "force" remained 
they had a hungry time of It, Needy as were the people, no sum 
of money could purchase food or service for the police. 

Legal methods were adopted In other cases. The League sup- 
plied the funds for the defence of the tenants: the whole facts of 
the case — rent, valuation and other circumstances were brought out 
in public, and very often the landlord lost in law more than he could 
possibly gain in rent. The League saw to it that after an eviction 
took place the land would remain tenantless and profitless. The 



THE LAND STRUGGLE BEGINS 633 

policy was to pay the rent for one holding in a district and on this 
consolidate the evicted, who would, thus, have some scanty sub- 
sistence and be near at hand to repel any attempt to grab their 
holdings. 

An interesting meeting was held at Straide, County Mayo, on 
February ist, 1880. The platform was erected on the very site 
of Davitt's home from which he was cast on the roadside at the 
age of five. In the course of a powerful address, Davitt said: 
"Can a more eloquent denunciation of an accursed land code be 
found than what is witnessed here in this depopulated district? In 
the memory of many now listening to my words that peaceful little 
stream which meanders by the outskirts of this multitude sang back 
the merry voices of happy children and wended its way through 
a once populous and prosperous village. Now, however, the merry 
sounds are gone, the busy hum of hamlet life is hushed in sad deso- 
lation, for the hands of the home-destroyers have been here and 
performed their hellish work, leaving Straide but a name to mark 
the place where happy homesteads once stood, and whence an in- 
offensive people were driven to the four corners of the earth by the 
ruthless decree of landlordism. How often in a strange land has 
my boyhood's ear drunk in the tale of outrage and wrong and in- 
famy perpetrated here in the name of English laws, and in the 
interest of territorial greed; in listening to the accounts of famine 
and sorrow, of deaths by starvation, of coffinless graves, of scenes 

"On highway side, where oft was seen 
The wild dog and the vulture keen 
Tug for the limbs and gnaw the face 
Of some starved child of our Irish race. 

. . . "It is no little consolation to know, however, that we are here 
to-day doing battle against a doomed monopoly, and that the power 
which has so long domineered over Ireland and its people is 
brought to its knees at last, and on the point of being crushed for 
ever, and if I am standing to-day upon a platform erected over the 
ruins of my levelled home, I may yet have the satisfaction of tram- 
pling on the ruins of Irish landlordism." 

English statesmanship has never regarded any Irish question 
other than as a possible electioneering device. Disraeli wrote in 

"Neither liberty of the press nor liberty of the person exists in 
Ireland. Arrests are at all times liable. It is a fact that at any 
time in Ireland the police may enter into your house, examine your 
papers to see If there is any resemblance between the writing and 



634 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

that of some anonymous letter that has been sent to a third person. 
In Ireland, if a man writes an article in a newspaper, and it offends 
the Government, he has a warning, and if he repeats the offence his 
paper may be suppressed. They say Ireland is peaceful. Yes, but 
she is so, not because she is contented, but because she is held under 
by coercive laws. These laws may be necessary. I am not here 
objecting to them. I am a Tory, and as such I might favour 
severer laws myself. But I say it isn't honest in the Liberals, while 
denouncing us, to imitate our ways." 

Already he had written in 1844: 

"I want to see a public man come forward and say what the 
Irish question is. One says it is a physical question; another a 
spiritual. Now it is the absence of the aristocracy; now the absence 
of railways. It is the Pope one day and potatoes the next. A 
dense population in extreme distress inhabit an island where there 
is an established church which is not their church; and a territorial 
aristocracy, the richest of whom live in a distant capital. Thus 
they have a starving population, an absentee aristocracy, an alien 
church, and in addition the weakest executive in the world. Well, 
what then would honourable gentlemen say if they were reading of a 
country in that position? They would say at once, 'The remedy is 
revolution.' But the Irish could not have a revolution, and why? 
Because Ireland is connected with another and more powerful coun- 
try. Then what is the consequence? The connection with Eng- 
land became the cause of the present state of Ireland. If the con- 
nection with England prevented a revolution, and a revolution was 
the only remedy, England logically is in the odious position of be- 
ing the cause of all the misery of Ireland. What, then, is the duty 
of an English minister? To effect by his policy all those changes 
which a revolution would do by force. That is the Irish question 
In its entirety." 

Disraeli was twice premier in the meantime. In 1880 as Lord 
Beaconsfield he made Ireland, then more unsettled than ever, the 
basis of his appeal to the electorate. "The arts of agitators," he 
wrote, "which represented that England instead of being the gen- 
erous and sympathising friend, was indifferent to the dangers and 
sufferings of Ireland, have been defeated by the measures, at once 
liberal and prudent, which Parliament have almost unanimously 
sanctioned." 

Of a thousand answers to this manifesto we just pause to give 
one. Mulhall's Dictionary of Statistics gives the details year by 
year (taken from official British sources) of the number of Irish 
families evicted from 1849 to 1882; and the thirty-three years' 



THE LAND STRUGGLE BEGINS 



^3S 



total of officially reported evictions (which fall far short of the 
full number) Is 482,000 families. Since a low average for each 
family in the mountain d' stricts of Ireland would be father, mother 
and six children, this represents the appalling total of 3,856,000 
creatures cast out to starve or die in a third of a century. 

And the measures "at once liberal and prudent" during the half 
century from Catholic Emancipation 1829 to 1879 (the year be- 
fore that in which Lord Beaconsfield spoke) are detailed in Michael 
Davitt's "Fall of Feudalism In Ireland." First are given the 
ameliorative measures offered In the British Parliament In Ireland's 
behalf — and next the measures that she received. Summing up 
the first It Is shown that of the forty-nine ameliorative measures 
put forward In the fifty years, five were withdrawn, seven were re- 
jected, twenty-one were dropped, fifteen proved abortive — and the 
grand total of one of the forty-nine was passed ! 

Then, the following Is a list of acts "at once liberal and pru- 
dent" which the British Parliament, with "almost unanimous sanc- 
tion," did bestow upon Ireland in those years: 



1830 Importation of Arms Act. 1848 

1831 WhIteboyAct. 1849 

1831 Stanley's Arms Act. 1850 

1832 Arms and Gunpowder Act. 1851 

1833 Suppression of Disturbance. 1853 

1833 Change of Venue Act. 1854 

1834 Disturbances Amendment 1855 

and Continuance. 1856 

1834 Arms and Gunpowder Act. 1858 

1835 Public Peace Act. 1860 

1836 Another Arms Act. 1862 

1838 Another Arms Act. 1862 

1839 Unlawful Oaths Act. 1865 

1840 Another Arms Act. 1866 

1841 Outrages Act. 

1841 Another Arms Act. 1866 

1843 Another Arms Act. 1867 

1843 Act Consolidating all Previ- 1868 

ous Coercion Acts. 1870 

1844 Unlawful Oaths Act. 1871 

1845 Unlawful Oaths Act. 

1846 Constabulary' Enlargement. 1871 

1847 Crime and Outrage Act. 1873 

1848 Treason Amendment Act. 1875 
1848 Removal of Arms Act. 1875 
1848 Suspension of Habeas Corpus. 



Another Oaths Act. 

Suspension of Habeas Corpus. 

Crime and Outrage Act. 

Unlawful Oaths Act. 

Crime and Outrage Act. 

Crime and Outrage Act. 

Crime and Outrage Act. 

Peace Preservation Act. 

Peace Preservation Act. 

Peace Preservation Act. 

Peace Preservation Act. 

Unlawful Oaths Act. 

Peace Preservation Act. 

Suspension of Habeas Corpus 
Act (August). 

Suspension of Habeas Corpus. 

Suspension of Habeas Corpus. 

Suspension of Habeas Corpus. 

Peace Preservation Act. 

Protection of Life and Prop- 
erty. 

Peace Preservation Con. 

Peace Preservation Act. 

Peace Preservation Act. 

Unlawful Oaths Act (lasting 
until 1879). 



CHAPTER LXXIV 

THE LAND LEAGUE 

The funds of the Land League and of other organisations enabled 
the Western people to put in good seed in 1880, and there was 
every prospect of a good harvest. Suddenly, in March, the Tory 
Government resigned. Parnell hurried from America where he 
had founded the American Land League, leaving Dillon behind to 
attend to details. No man could have worked harder than Parnell 
during the elections. He was ubiquitous. The constituencies, 
Meath, Mayo and Cork City, vied for the honour of having him as 
representative. His nomination for Cork City was a piece of 
"political strategy." Parnell was wired to in the name of a friend 
asking him to accept nomination. Two hundred and fifty pounds 
was handed to his friend, Mr. Horgan, for expenses, and this sum 
was supposed to have been sent by Parnell. Mr. Horgan promptly 
paid fifty pounds of this sum to the sheriff. Parnell arrived in 
Cork. Then the plot was made manifest. The Tories wished to 
defeat the Whigs by a split vote. The tables were turned on them 
when Mr. T. M. Healy suggested that the two hundred pounds 
would go some way towards Parnell's election expenses. To the 
great disgust of the Tories Parnell was elected, and his election ex- 
penses defrayed in great part by their own money. He then got 
Mr. A. J. Kettle elected for Cork County, and followed up this 
triumph by success all over Ireland. Sixty-four Nationalists were 
elected. Of these Parnell was leader of thirty-six, who instead of 
joining the Liberals took their seats on the Opposition Benches. A 
Bill was introduced by Mr. O'Connor Power to compel landlords 
to compensate tenants for disturbance. This was taken up by Mr. 
Gladstone's new Liberal Chief Secretary, Mr. Forster, was watered 
down, made a Government measure, passed through the House of 
Commons, and contemptuously rejected by the Lords. Mean- 
while, things had been moving in Ireland. "Hold the Harvest* 
had become a rallying cry. Mr. James Redpath, an American 
journalist, who had already risked life and fortune in the cause of 
human freedom, outlined at Claremorris the system afterwards 

636 



THE LAND LEAGUE 637 

known as Boycotting. The landlord who oppressed his tenants, 
the man who took a farm from which another tenant had been 
evicted, and all who had intercourse with the hke, were to be made 
social outcasts. A little later Parnell preached the same doctrine. 
His sister, Fanny Parnell, sent a ringing song from America. A 
few verses will suffice to show its import: 

"Keep the law, oh, keep it well — keep it as your rulers do ! 

Be not righteous overmuch — when they break it so can you! 

As they rend their pledge and bond, rend you, too, their legal thongs; 

When they crush your chartered rights, tread you down your char- 
tered wrongs. 

Help them on, and help them aye, help them as true brethren should, 
boys; 

All that's right and good for them, sure for you is right and good, 
boys. 

"Hold the rent and hold the crops, boys. 
Pass the word from town to town, 
Pull away the props, boys, 
So you'll pull coercion down." 

Mr. Forster, a well intentioned man, was entering on the ordeal 
of every Chief Secretary for Ireland. He felt that things were 
getting out of hand. An indictment of most of the prominent 
members of the League was prepared. The charge was that of 
conspiracy, under which any member could be found guilty of any 
utterance if any man definitely proved to be associated with the 
League. Meanwhile, the policy advocated by Redpath and Par- 
nell was being carried out. The first victim was one Captain Boy- 
cott, agent for Lord Erne, who lived at Lough Mask House in 
County Mayo. He had dismissed his labourers owing to a dispute 
over wages. No others appeared to take their places. The Cap- 
tain waxed angry. Thereafter he would grant no abatements of 
rent. Processes were duly obtained — there was no one to serve 
them. The blacksmith was too busy to shoe the Captain's horses. 
The herds found the climate unhealthy. The baker ran out of 
flour. The postman was liable to overlook Lough Mask House, 
unless his missives for the Captain were unmistakably bills. The 
Captain's crops were ripening with no one to reap them. But re- 
lief was coming. 

Fifty northern Orangemen escorted by two thousand soldiers 
arrived in Mayo to assist Captain Boycott. There was not a car 
in Claremorris fit for the job of transporting any of them. There 



638 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

was not a horse that had not a loose shoe, spavins, rickets or house- 
maid's knee. The labourers and their escort had to walk from 
Claremorris — fifteen miles — and it rained. Somehow and some- 
time they reached Lough Mask House. The formidable force en- 
camped on the Captain's lawn. They had not made provision for 
their subsistence; if they were doing the Captain's work they pre- 
sumed that they were to be fed at the Captain's expense. They 
ate his turkeys, geese, piglings, goslings, ducklings and all other of 
the most succulent part of his possessions. It was estimated that 
— apart from the Captain's losses — it cost the country ten pounds 
for every pound's worth of crop reaped on his land. 

At last they departed. An interested spectator of the scene 
was Father John O'Malley of the Neale. There was another, 
an old woman. She wished, as woman will, to see the passage of 
troops. Father John advanced on her with menace; "Did I not 
warn you to let the British Army alone? How dare you come 
here to intimidate Her Majesty's troops?" 

Mr. Forster was on the whole about as unfortunate as any 
other Chief Secretary for Ireland. He meant well, so do they all. 
Mr. Forster on the second reading of O'Connor Power's Bill gave 
some interesting figures. In the fVest Riding of Galway alone he 
had employed the following forces for protecting process-servers 
and carrying out evictions 4,049 soldiers — all, in a single district, 
paid by the Irish people for their own extermination. 

The Land League went ahead. Huts were erected for evicted 
tenants. Relief works were started. We cannot well say how 
many emigrated, and how many died on their way to a foreign 
shore; the dead do not talk. We know that there was a big toll 
of lives.^ 

A debate took place ni 1880 on the conduct of the Royal Irish 
Constabulary at evictions. Mr. Forster was their champion. He 
admitted that ball cartridges should not be supplied to police in 
close contact with excited people — hence they should get buckshot. 
Even if loaded with only snipe-shot, a shotgun is more treacherous 

* John Mitchel in talking of the evicting horror, gives a terse and terrible sum- 
mary of the happenings upon one estate as the result of one eviction crop : 

"At an eviction in 1854. on a property under the management of Marcus Keane, 
James O'Gorman, one of the tenants evicted, died on the roadside. His wife and 
children were sent to the workhouse, where they died shortly afterwards. 

"John Corbet, a tenant on another townland, was evicted by the same agent. 
He died on the roadside. His wife had died previous to the eviction ; his ten 
children were sent into the workhouse and there died. 

"Michael McMahon, evicted at the same time, was dragged out of bed, to the 
roadside, where he died of want the next day. His wife died of want previous 
to the eviction, and his children, eight in number, died in a few years in the work- 
house." 



THE LAND LEAGUE 639 

when discharged on a crowd than a rifle. His name in Ireland, 
first shouted across the floor of the House, has ever since been 
"Buckshot Forster.'* 

Forster proceeded in the traditional way to pacify Ireland. 
All the leaders and organisers were arrested. The whole Irish na- 
tion was constituted by statute an illegal assembly. A conspiracy 
act was framed under which every individual in the League could 
be held accountable for the action or speech of any one. 

The state trial opened in Dublin in December, 1880. There 
were three judges and a formidable array of counsel; seven for 
the Crown, nine for the traversers, exclusive of solicitors. One of 
the most interesting interludes was the production by Mr. Tom 
Brennan, the League's secretary, of some hundred evicted tenants 
from the Castlebar workhouse, who, however, were not heard, be- 
cause of a change in tactics of the prosecution. They were seen, 
however, and were quite sufficient evidence of the necessity of the 
Land League organisation. Meanwhile Parnell and his colleagues 
crossed to London for the opening of the session of Parliament, 
letting the court do what it pleased. The jury disagreed after a 
trial of thirty days. There was a touch of farce about the whole 
proceeding. The Crown case broke down. Davitt's ticket-of- 
leave was immediately cancelled. He was sent back to prison. 
He had, however, laid his lines well. He had established the 
"Ladies' Land League." He had relied on the women of Ireland 
to carry on, even if all the leaders were in prison." 

- The following verses from a poem of Miss Fanny Parnell show the spirit 
of the women : 

"Now, are you men, or are you kine, ye tillers of the soil? 
Would you be free, or evermore the rich man's cattle toil? 
The shadow on the dial hangs that points the fatal hour — 
Now hold your own ! or branded slaves, for ever cringe and cower. 

"The serpent's curse upon you lies — ye writhe within the dust, 
Ye fill your mouths with beggars' swill, ye grovel for a crust ; 
Your lords have set their blood-stained heels upon your shameful heads, 
Yet they are kind — they leave you still their ditches for your beds ! 

"Oh, by the God who made us all — the seignior and the serf — 
Rise up and swear this day to hold your own green Irish turf ; 
Rise up and plant your feet as men where now you crawl as slaves. 
And make your harvest-fields your camps, or make of them your graves. 

"Three hundred years your crops have sprung, by murdered corpses fed: 
Your butchered sires, your famished sires, your ghastly compost spread ; 
Their bones have fertilised your fields, their blood has fall'n like rain ; 
They died that ye might eat and live — God! have they died in vain? 

"The hour has struck. Fate holds the dice, we stand with bated breath ; 
Now who shall have your harvests fair — 'tis Life that plays with Death; 



'640 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Miss Anna Parnell was president of the Ladies' Land League. 
When Miss Parnell and her associates took up work they did it 
in no half-hearted fashion. They were all that Davitt expected of 
them — and more. They were not very restrained or very scrupu- 
lous. There was no reason why they should. Davitt had been 
sent back to penal servitude on the 3rd February, 1881. Next day 
Parnell and all his followers were suspended, and forcibly ejected 
out of the London House of Commons. Gladstone introduced a 
measure which made, practically, an end of obstruction. But home 
in Ireland Parnell was a much more dangerous force than he had 
been in Westminster. Land League Courts were held before which 
offenders were arraigned. Boycotting went on effectually. How 
effectually is shown by the case of Jones of Clonakilty. He tried 
to sell grain at Bandon. The League picketted his produce. He 
tried to send cattle to England — ^no ship at a southern port would 
carry them. He sent them by rail to Dublin: the mariners would 
not sail with them; they were ultimately got to Liverpool in Liver- 
pool boats: no Irish salesman would offer them for sale. At the 
end, a private sale of them, at a loss, was all Jones could effect. 

Arrests were frequent. This fact intensified the agitation. A 
grabber was shot occasionally — showing Mr. Forster that two 
parties could operate outside the common law. The landlords wel- 
comed coercion, and under its shield process-serving for rent went 
forward with a bound. Then, as now, forty years later, the idea 
was to rush matters, and have all the trouble over in a couple of 
months. Then, as now, an extension of time for the subjugation 
of the Irish was necessary. A bad conflict between civilians and 
police, guarding a process-server, occurred at Monasteraden, 
County Sligo, in April. The police fired on a crowd of people 
who blocked the way to the houses of those on whom the notices 
were to be served. Two men were slain. Sergeant Armstrong, 
who gave the order to fire, was immediately steeped in gore and 
died. His men escaped a like fate by flight. 

Then, at last, it began to dawn on the English Liberal Govern- 
ment that there must be something wrong in Ireland. There are 
two things that always go hand in hand in Ireland, coercion and 
benevolent legislation. Coercion is strong, harsh, ineffective. All 

Now v.-ho shall have our Motherland? 'tis Rig-ht that plays with Might; 
The peasant's arms were weak, indeed, in such unequal fight! 

"But God is on the peasant's side, the God that loves the poor; 
His angels stand with flaming swords on every mount and moor. 
They guard the poor man's flocks and herds, they guard his ripening grain ; 
The robber sinks beneath tlieir curse beside his ill-got gain." 



THE LAND LEAGUE 641 

English Governments — Liberal and Tory alike — come to us with a 
whip in one hand and a "concession" in the other. 

Gladstone had to face facts and bring in a Land Bill for Ire- 
land. It was considered at a convention of the Land League in 
Dublin in April, 1881. Parnell was for its acceptance with such 
amendments as might be possible; John Dillon and Secretary Bren- 
nan were opposed. The majority supported Parnell. Dillon was 
arrested on the 30th April and lodged in Kilmainham jail. Bren- 
nan was arrested soon after. It was hoped that this would create 
an atmosphere for the new Land Bill. It did. There were men 
forthcoming to fill all vacancies that Gladstone and Forster might 
create. And then there were the women. 

Coercion bore its usual fruits: arrests, evictions, outrages. 
The people defied a law that defied the people. The Irish have 
never been willing slaves. 

The Gladstone Land Act of 1881 was the usual compromise. 
The tenants were allowed for their improvements — if they could 
prove them in court of law. It was well known that the landlords 
made no improvements. If a man bought a farm he had to pay 
for it as it stood, drains, fences and all. If a man inherited a 
farm he had to prove what improvements were made, and by whom, 
and when, and if he could not procure witnesses he was non-suited 
in claiming a fair rent. If the farm was at the seaside, the tenant 
was considered not to be entitled to normal reduction of rent be- 
cause he could cut seaweed at the risk of his life; if he set up a 
mill, grew fruit or otherwise improved the holding, at his own ex- 
pense, that was set against him. If he built "too good a house," 
again at his own expense, that prejudiced his claim to a fair rent. 
If he set up a shop, that also, in practice, went against him; the 
value of the holding went up. 

The tenant was discouraged from doing anything to improve 
his place. The worse it looked the safer he was. Even though 
the Act was good in principle it proved to be what Dillon prophe- 
sied It would be : "a milch cow for the lawyers." 

Forster succeeded in making Ireland what is called in official 
documents to-day "an appropriate hell" for those who disagreed 
with him. Men were imprisoned without trial, grabbers and other 
offenders were severely dealt with; men were shot dead: Priests 
were arrested, including Father Eugene Sheehy of Limerick, a 
veteran who lived to be present at the inauguration of the Irish 
Volunteers in 19 13. 

Parnell denounced the conduct of the English Government 
in Parliament. He was suspended for a vigorous attack on Glad- 



642 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

stone, and immediately crossed to Ireland where his operations 
made the Government bitterly regret his suspension. He and his 
followers had shown that they had no responsibility for the Land 
Act, by leaving the House of Commons before the division on both 
the Second and Third Readings. He endeavoured to get the best 
Bill he could, but was anxious to make it clear that it was not his 
Bill, or one he approved of. One of his first actions in Ireland 
was to propose and carry at a Land League convention in Dublin 
a resolution that the Land Act be tested in Court by specially 
selected cases, and that other tenants should wait to see how things 
would go in these cases. This adroit move simply meant that the 
Land Act would be held up indefinitely, and that a chance, based on 
the results of proceedings in the courts might arise for its radical 
emendation. It was one of the most politic moves of Parnell's 
whole career. But it was foiled. Let Michael Davitt tell the 
story : 

"A class of Ulster tenants who had given no help to the Land 
League movement rushed into the land courts and set an example, 
baited with an average twenty per cent reduction of old rents. . . . 
Those tenants, however, who acted thus precipitately and unwisely 
were to live to regret that they had not followed Mr. Parnell's 
advice." 

Then came another of these little incidents which play such a 
part in the relations of the EngUsh Government with Ireland. A 
Parnellite candidate was beaten by a Liberal in Tyrone. Glad- 
stone was delighted. He wrote Mr. Forster: "The unexpected 
victory in Tyrone is an event of importance, and I own it increases 
my desire to meet the remarkable Irish manifestation and discom- 
fiture both of Parnell and the Tories with some initial act of 
clemency, in view especially of the coming election for Monaghan. 
I do not know whether the release of the priest (Father Sheehy) 
would be a reasonable beginning. . . . To reduce the following of 
Parnell by drawing away from him all well inclined men seems to 
me the key of Irish politics for the moment. . . ." 

But Mr. Forster was adamant. Instead of inclining to an "act 
of clemency" he advised Gladstone, in a forthcoming speech at 
Leeds, to denounce Parnell's "action and policy." "Parnell's re- 
ply to you," he said, "may be a treasonable outburst." Mr. Glad- 
stone took his secretary's advice. He denounced Parnell. He 
declared that "the resources of civilisation were not exhausted." 
Parnell's reply at Wexford, whether treasonable or not, was cor- 
rosive. He dissected the "Grand Old Man" mercilessly. He 
compared him to a schoolboy going past a graveyard, whistling 



THE LAND LEAGUE 643 

to keep up his courage. And he concluded with the stinging 
phrases : 

"1 trust as the result of this great movement we shall see that, 
just as Gladstone by the Act of 1881 has eaten all his own words, 
has departed from all his formerly declared principles, now we 
shall see that these brave words of the English Prime Minister will 
be scattered like chaff before the united and advancing determina- 
tion of the Irish people to regain for themselves their lost land 
and their legislative independence." His friends rightly felt that 
now his arrest was certain. At length one of them plucked up 
courage to ask him: "Suppose they arrest you, Mr. Parnell . . . 
who will take your place?" "Captain Moonlight,"^ repUed 
ParnelL 

3 The resolute ones who took guns and went after tyrannical landlords— 
and tyrants — were known as Moonlighters. 



CHAPTER LXXV 

THE ladies' land league 

Meanwhile, United Ireland was founded on the ruins of a paper 
called the Fla^ of Ireland bought from one Richard Piggott, of 
which more will be heard later. William O'Brien became its edi- 
tor and gave admirable service to the cause. The No Rent 
manifesto was issued, signed by Parnell, Kettle, Davitt, Brennan, 
Dillon, Sexton, Patrick Egan — all in prison except Egan who 
was in Paris to safeguard the funds. The purport was that no 
rents were to be paid under any circumstances until the Govern- 
ment abandoned terrorism and restored the constitutional rights 
of the people. 

This was a bold and dangerous policy. Had It been tried 
earlier, as Davitt had suggested, it might have shaken the Govern- 
ment and secured a better Land Act. But now the leaders were 
all in prison. The Land Act would soon be law, and the harassed 
tenants were likely to accept any relief that it offered. The mani- 
festo was written by William O'Brien, and only with much dif- 
fidence signed by Parnell, Dillon, and the others. Forster's coun- 
ter-move was not delayed. Two days later the Land League was 
proclaimed an illegal association, and it was announced that all its 
meetings would be, if necessary, dispersed by force. 

The Ladies' Land League took matters in hand and Mr. For- 
ster began to realise that he had possibly blundered. He had some 
1,083 men in prison,^ including the most upright and sensible men 
in the movement, and how was he to rule a country directed by a 
few women in Dublin? They had plenty of money, partly supplied 
from America, partly from Paris by Mr. Patrick Egan. Relief 
and help were given according to the amount of activity displayed 
in a district. Boycotting increased. Any agrarian crime was de- 
fended from the funds of the Ladies' Land League. If a grabber 
was left in quiet possession of a farm there was not a farthing avail- 

*Tliese men were never faced with any charges. They were "suspects." 
Habeas corpus then — as often before and since — was suspended. 

644 



THE LADIES' LAND LEAGUE 645 

able for the district in which he lived. Anybody going into the 
Land Courts was condemned and intimidated. Hunting by the 
"gentry" was stopped. The situation day by day became more 
and more chaotic. 

Mr. Forster thought the matter over, and hoped that if he had 
some of these women arrested it might ease the situation. He had 
about half a dozen arrested and was not pleased with the result. 
He found he was only lashing public opinion into fury. He found 
that there was hardly a girl in Ireland who would not joyfully go 
to prison for the cause. In fact they were inviting arrest. 

Needless to say, the "outrages" were not all on one side. For- 
ster's Buckshot Brigade loyally and zealously carried out their mas- 
ter's orders. In addition to the buckshot, the peelers were pro- 
vided with a more- deadly type of bayonet. A few examples will 
suffice to show how the orders to break the spirit of the people 
were carried out. At Grawhill, near BelmuUet in October 1881, 
a crowd assembled, chiefly composed of women and children. The 
officer in charge of the crown forces gave orders to fire a volley of 
buckshot into the crowd and then charge with the bayonet. Num- 
bers were wounded; the crowd rushed away in shrieking panic, the 
police freely using their bayonets indiscriminately on all they came 
up with. Mrs. Mary Deane, a widowed mother, was shot dead; 
a young girl, Ellen McDonagh, was stabbed to death. On May 
5th, 1882, a band of lads of twelve years and under paraded In 
Ballina, County Mayo, with tin whistles and cans to celebrate Par- 
nell's release. They were assailed with a hail of buckshot, chased 
and stabbed. One poor lad, Patrick Melody, fell dead at his 
father's feet on the threshold of his home. 

Poor Mr. Forster stuck it out bravely. He asked Gladstone 
for further powers, but Gladstone was getting nervous. Money 
was pouring in from America, where T. P. O'Connor, T. M, Healy 
and Father Sheehy were now operating, and the "Grand Old Man" 
was becoming alarmed. In his alarm he had recourse to Rome, 
conveniently forgetting a pamphlet he had written a short time 
previously on Vaticanism. He was successful — to a certain extent. 
Through diplomacy — which could also be called another name — 
he secured a condemnation of the Land League and Its policy In 
January, 1882, though the League had passed out of legal exist- 
ence by Mr. Forster's edict in October, 1881. This condemnation 
had no effect on the struggle. 

The Ladies' Land League became daily more active in relieving 
distress and keeping up the agitation. Forster was being worsted. 
He was prepared to propose a system of provincial councils for 



646 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Ireland with limited autonomy, hoping that a bribe might weaken 
the opposition. However, a dramatic change in the situation soon 
took place. 

Parnell was released on parole to attend the funeral of a 
nephew in Paris. On his way through London he saw Justin Mc- 
Carthy and explained to him a project he had in his mind for the 
amendment of the Land Act by the cancellation of arrears thereby 
bringing under its provisions a vast number of tenants who were at 
present excluded. The prisoners should be released, the No-Rent 
manifesto withdrawn, and the agitation, generally, slowed down. 
Captain O'Shea was selected as his envoy to break this to Glad- 
stone and Chamberlain. The message was delivered. Gladstone 
was delighted. "On the whole," he wrote to Forster, "Parnell's 
letter is the most extraordinary I ever read. I cannot help feeling 
indebted to O'Shea." 

Parnell returned to prison, but his release was now only a mat- 
ter of time. Gladstone was sick of coercion. Chamberlain, on 
his own admission, would have liked to succeed Forster as Chief 
Secretary for Ireland. Rather than consent to Parnell's release. 
Earl Cowper and Forster resigned. The very day before Parnell's 
proposals reached Gladstone the latter had written to Forster giv- 
ing dim outlines for Land reform and self-government. "It is lib- 
erty," he said, "that makes men fit for liberty. This proposition 
has its bounds but it is far safer than the counter-doctrine — wait 
till they are fit." Parnell's proposals contained no mention of self- 
government. Neither had he consulted his colleagues concerning 
them. A new and different Parnell was developing. 

On May 4th, 1882, Forster was explaining his position to the 
House of Commons. He had had a bad time of it in Ireland; he 
had shown himself a plucky fighter and he had been beaten, beaten 
by the Irish, and that was sufficient to win him the sympathy of 
the house. He was in the middle of his speech, denouncing the 
League, denouncing Parnell, when suddenly he was interrupted by 
a storm of cheers from the Irish benches. Parnell, dignified and 
haughty as of old, triumph depicted on his handsome features, had 
entered the House. He went to his seat, folded his arms, and 
gazed with cold scorn at his jailer, now in disgrace. He could not 
but rejoice that he had done to England what English Governments 
have always sought to do in Ireland — divide the forces of the oppo- 
sition. Here were Gladstone and Forster at loggerheads: Glad- 
stone on his feet to answer his ex-Chief-Secretary at whose bidding 
he had invoked the "resources of civilisation," and defending the 
man against whom, they had been invoked. Gladstone replied 



THE LADIES' LAND LEAGUE 647 

quietly that the circumstances which warranted the arrest no longer 
existed, and that he was assured that, if the Government settled 
the question of arrears, the three released members would be on 
the side of law and order. 

This was open to the interpretation that Parnell had stipulated 
for the release as part of the treaty. Parnell, who next spoke, de- 
clared that never in speech or writing had he made the release of 
himself and his colleagues a condition of their action, but that the 
settlement of the arrears question — arrears through three bad sea- 
sons — would have a great effect on the restoration of law and order. 
He was not going to be fettered. 

Davitt was released on the 6th May. He was met by Parnell, 
Dillon and O' Kelly and escorted to London. It was evident from 
Pamell's talk and demeanour that he meant to slow down the 
agitation, and was already making a beginning. He spoke of the 
amount of crime and outrage that had occurred during his im- 
prisonment, and of the amount of money expended by the Ladies' 
Land League; Davitt drew his attention to the fact that the Ladies 
had broken Forster, killed coercion and released Parnell and his 
colleagues. However, expectations and discussions of policy faded 
into the background when the news came that night from Dublin 
that Lord Cavendish, who had only arrived that day, had been 
slain that evening in the Phoenix Park by members of a secret so- 
ciety called the "Invlncibles." Parnell, ever so helpful in a crisis, 
collapsed. He wished to resign at once. He told his friends of 
his resolve to retire from public life for ever, and wrote to Glad- 
stone and asking his opinion in relation to his leadership. All of 
them advised him to stay on. The Arrears Act was passed and 
Parnell was bent more than ever on slowing down the agitation. 
It transpired from O'Shea's evidence at the Times Commission 
that he was thinking of this as early as June 1881. The Ladies' 
Land League languished for lack of funds which Parnell refused 
to supply. On the other hand the landlords were as greedy for 
their pound of flesh as ever. Mr. George Trevelyan, the new Chief 
Secretary, admitted In Parliament that in three days one hundred 
and fifty families, numbering seven hundred and fifty persons, were 
evicted In one district alone, for arrears of the bad years — which 
they were no more able to pay than they were to pay the National 
Debt. 

There was now no National Organisation, and so the "Na- 
tional League" was founded, with Home Rule, land reform, local 
self-government, parliamentary and municipal reform as the planks 
in its platform. As the new League was to pursue a parliamentary 



648 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

poliq'^ it followed that it would be under Parnell's control. The 
party could not quarrel with its leader in face of the enemy, and 
there was no question of any other leader. His dictatorship, about 
which so much ink has been spilled, was forced on him by his per- 
sonality, by the admiration of his followers, and the circumstances 
of the fight. And until 1881, at least, he acted in consultation 
with his colleagues on matters of importance, and of his own 
initiativ'e in matters of emergency, when none other could so thor- 
oughly grasp the facts of a situation and act so promptly and 
effectively as himself. 

The Phoenix Park tragedy led to further coercion. A Crimes 
Bill was introduced. Trial by Jury in certain specified cases was 
abohshed. In proclaimed districts any dwelling might be entered 
and searched at any hour of day or night. Secret courts of en- 
quiry were instituted, newspapers might be suppressed, meetings 
banned and dispersed by force. 

There were many murders and other outrages In 1882, an 
exceptionally bad one at Maamtrasna on the borders of Mayo and 
Galway where a whole family, with the exception of one son, was 
destroyed. One of those accused of complicity in this crime, 
Myles Joyce, died protesting his innocence, and later the informer 
who swore his life away admitted to Doctor MacEvilly, Arch- 
bishop of Tuam, that Joyce was innocent. The Government, 
however, was deaf to all requests to grant an enquiry to clear the 
memory of an Innocent man. 

The arrest and trial, in the beginning of 1883, of, persons sup- 
posed to have been Implicated In the Phoenix Park murders gave 
Forster what he considered a fine opportunity of turning the tables 
on Parnell. They were arrested In January and the enquiry began 
in February. One of them, James Carey, was wiled by detective 
Mallon Into turning Queen's evidence. He was given to think 
that others had given Information. His wife helped to entrap 
him by some facts she communicated to Mallon in order to secure 
his release. Five of the conspirators were hanged and others 
sent Into penal servitude. Carey was sent abroad, was identified 
on the high seas by a fellow-passenger, Patrick O'Donnell of Done- 
gal, and shot dead. O'Donnell was taken to England and hanged. 

Various details of the evidence gave hope that a case might 
be made convicting Parnell of complicity in the crime. Carey was 
a Home Ruler. An official of the National League of England, 
was Implicated. The knives with which the deed was done had 
been secreted in the London office of the National League and 
brought to Dublin by this man's wife. These "revelations," ex- 



THE LADIES' LAND LEAGUE 649 

ploited in the London press, gave Forster his chance which he 
was not slow to take. 

In February, '83, there was a debate on Irish policy. Mr. 
Forster made an able speech showing that crime had followed 
the footsteps of the Land League and holding Parnell responsible 
for them, not for having personally planned or perpetrated out- 
rage or murder but for having connived at them or at least for not 
having used his influence to stop them. 

The House was agog with excitement to hear Parnell's reply 
to this terrible indictment. There was no reply. Parnell held 
his seat as if nothing had happened; he was the one unexcited man 
in the Assembly. He was called on loudly from all parts of the 
House; his own colleagues were amazed; and begged him to re- 
ply. Parnell refused. The debate was kept going by an English 
member's intervention. Grudgingly Parnell yielded at length to 
the entreaties of his followers and moved the adjournment. 

The following day he replied to Forster in a memorable speech 
in which he scorned to defend himself to England and an English 
Parliament. In the course of it he said: "I have been accustomed 
during my political life to rely upon the public opinion of those 
whom I have desired to help, and with whose aid I have worked 
for the cause of prosperity and freedom in Ireland, and the utmost 
I desire to do in the very few words I shall address to the House 
is to make my position clear to the Irish people at home and 
abroad." 

There spoke the real Parnell. He scorned to defend himself 
before an English tribunal. The Irish people and they alone 
should be the judges of his policy and of his actions. His sole 
power as leader was based on the driving force of organised Irish 
opinion. With that behind him he could deal independently with 
either Liberals or Tories. 

From 1882 Parnell was frequently absent for long periods 
from the House of Commons, so much so as to mystify his fol- 
lowers who at times of great stress did not know where to find 
him. There were many reasons for this. One — the least power- 
ful, perhaps — was failing health. Another was that events in Ire- 
land and the increase in the number of outrages and the growth of 
secret societies made him feel that it was necessary that Ireland 
after her fierce struggle should be allowed to settle down. He 
was true to his plighted word given in the Kilmainham Treaty 
that he would help to "slow down" the agitation. But there was 
a third and incomparably more potent cause than either of these; 
the unhappy love entanglement which was to work the ruin of his 



650 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

career when he had attained the zenith of his power and triumphed 
over enemies who had used every endeavour open and occult to 
undermine his influence. 

It is not necessary to go into the details of this intrigue except 
in so far as is necessary to illuminate some otherwise dark corners 
in Parnell's public life. Captain O'Shea, elected for Clare in 
1880, had in that same year been introduced to Parnell. Soon 
after, Parnell met Mrs. O'Shea under circumstances about which 
accounts differ. A love affair soon developed between them which 
was sensed by O'Shea in '81. A challenge came from O'Shea 
and was accepted by Parnell, but Mrs. O'Shea intervened, and 
persuaded her husband that all was right, and the incident was 
apparently amicably settled. 

In the beginning of '83 it became known that Parnell's prop- 
erty was heavily mortgaged. A subscription list was opened, and 
a grateful country subscribed generously. Once again English 
intrigue became busy at Rome. A letter was issued forbidding 
ecclesiastics to promote the Parnell Testimonial Fund. The testi- 
monial, however, was a great success and reached a total of close 
on forty thousand pounds. 

A Bill amending the Land Act of 1881 was introduced by 
Parnell soon after his duel with Forster, but was rejected by two 
hundred and fifty Liberal and Tory votes to sixty-three. 

Invited to attend a convention in Philadelphia to establish the 
National League in America, he replied that his presence in the 
House of Commons was necessary just then, and respectfully 
asked that the platform of the American League should be so 
formed that help might be received from America without giving 
the English Government a pretext to suppress the League in Ire- 
land. 

The contest in Monaghan at which Gladstone had hoped a 
blow would be struck at Parnell's prestige took place in the sum- 
mer of '83. Parnell put T. M. Healy forward for the seat. Mr. 
Healy won. It was not a tame election. The Orangemen arose 
in their might, there was much marching and drumming and the 
Orange leaders advised their followers to drive the rebel con- 
spirators across the Boyne. "We are not an aggressive party," 
said Mr. Murray Ker, D.L. "Let there be no revolver practice. 
My advice to you about revolvers is, never use a revolver except 
you are firing at someone." 

At this time Parnell was much annoyed by the policy pro- 
claimed in Patrick Ford's Irish IVorld advocating the use of dyna- 



THE LADIES' LAND LEAGUE 651 

mite. Several public buildings, bridges, and railway stations were 
attacked. The Government and the English people were seriously 
alarmed. A less courageous leader, would, to save his reputation 
with the English, have dissociated himself from a policy he de- 
tested. He did nothing of the kind. He cared nothing about 
English opinion. Said Lord Randolph Churchill to him on one 
occasion, "I suppose you would object to having a bomb thrown 
into the House of Commons; you would not like to be blown up 
even by an Irishman." "I am not so sure of that," repHed Par- 
nell, "f/ there were a call of the Hoiise.^^ 

In 1884 Parnell began to show occasional signs of his former 
activity and influence. After the Monaghan election he was in 
practical retirement until in April 1884 he attended a meeting at 
Drogheda where, without the slightest discourtesy to Davitt, he 
denounced his policy of Land Nationalisation, and disposed of 
any chance it might have of gaining a following. 

In 1885 the General Election was imminent. Parnell became 
mildly active. At Cork in January he made the famous declara- 
tion which is inseparably connected with his name, and in part 
inscribed on his monument in O'Connell Street, Dublin: 

*'We cannot ask for less than the restitution of Grattan's Par- 
liament, with its important privileges and wide, far-reaching con- 
stitution. We cannot, under the British constitution, ask for more 
than the restitution of Grattan's Parliament. But no man has a 
right to fix a boundary to the march of a nation. No man has a 
right to say, 'Thus far shalt thou go, and no further.' We have 
never attempted to fix the ne phis ultra to the progress of Ireland's 
nationhood, and we never shall." 

He visited Cork, Ennis and a few other places in Ireland. In 
April the Prince and Princess of Wales were to visit Ireland. 
Parnell defined in United Ireland the duty of Nationalists with 
regard to the reception they should receive. It was to let them 
come and go without allowing the hospitable nature and cordial 
disposition of the Irish people to carry them into any attitude 
which might be taken as one of condonation for the past, or satis- 
faction for the present state, of Irish affairs. Nor did he fail to 
point out the indecency of using royalty as an electioneering dodge, 
not against a party but against the Irish nation. By sending over 
Wales it was sought to free whichever Enghsh party was returned 
to power from their obligations to Ireland. If Wales got an en- 
thusiastic reception, then Ireland, apart from a few anarchists 
here and there, was contented; if a hostile, then the Irish were 



652 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

a people whom no measure would content; who after the settle- 
ment of the land question would dare to Insult the future king, who, 
of course, is above politics. And so forth. 

Parnell in 1885 had his powers as a politician taxed to the 
utmost. He decided to play three men against one another — 
Gladstone, Lord Randolph Churchill — a free-lance Tory — and 
Chamberlain — a free-lance Liberal. He hoped nothing from any 
English party or politician, except in so far as there was an axe 
to grind which could be ground only on the Irish question. He 
decided to beat the Liberals with the Irish vote and succeeded on 
a taxation question. Gladstone resigned. Without a dissolution 
of Parliament the Tories came into power, Lord Salisbury as 
Prime Minister. 

The Tories, in their ticklish position, were like cooing doves 
toward the Irish question. The Crimes Act which was due for 
renewal, and which Gladstone had intended to renew, was dropped. 
A new Land Act was introduced by Lord Ashbourne in the House 
of Lords. It was a fairly good Act, providing £5,000,000 for 
advances to tenants to buy their holdings, principal and interest 
at 4% to be paid in forty-nine years. Lord Carnarvon, the newly 
appointed Lord Lieutenant, had private interviews with Parnell 
and Sir Charles Gavan Duffy in which he declared himself per- 
sonally in favour of Irish self-government. Parnell assumed that 
this was the feeling, also, of the Tory Cabinet. In that, it trans- 
pired later, he was mistaken. While Carnarvon, personally, may 
have been sincere, he was the envoy of an English party with an 
election pending. The dissolution was fixed for November 1885. 

On July 29th Lord Salisbury made overtures for the Irish 
vote. There was no further reason for coercion in Ireland. The 
voice of the people should be heard. 

A week later Parnell opened his campaign In statesmanlike 
fashion, declaring for Home Rule and it alone. On August 24th 
at Dublin he said: 

"I say that each and all of us have only looked upon the Acts 
we have been able to wring from an unwilling Parliament as a 
means to an end ... I hope that It may not be necessary for us 
m the new Parliament to devote our attention to subsidiary meas- 
ures, and that It may be possible for us to have a programme and 
a platform with only one plank, and that one plank National In- 
dependence." 

It was a clever stroke. Now the rival statesmen must declare 
their colours. The first to do so was Lord Hartington, the Liberal. 
He declared that all England would unite to resist "so fatal and 



THE LADIES' LAND LEAGUE 653 

mischievous a proposal." Parnell replied that many similar mis- 
chievous proposals had become law, and that Ireland would have 
self-government or England would have to govern her as a Crown 
Colony. Lord Randolph Churchill spoke soon after. He was 
mute regarding Parnell's ultimatum. Next came Chamberlain, 
"Speaking for myself," he said, "if these and these alone are the 
terms on which Mr. Parnell's support is to be obtained, I will not 
enter into competition for it." John Morley followed with a sug- 
gestion of Home Rule on the Canadian system. Gladstone then 
came along with the Hawarden manifesto : 

"In my opinion, not now for the first time delivered, the limit 
is clear within which the desires of Ireland, constitutionally ascer- 
tained, may, and beyond which they cannot, receive the assent of 
Parliament. To maintain the supremacy of the Crown, the unity 
of the Empire, and all the authority of Parhament necessary for 
the conservation of that unity, is the first duty of every representa- 
tive of the people. Subject to this governing principle, every grant 
to portions of the country of enlarged powers for the manage- 
ment of their own affairs is, in my view, not a source of danger, 
but a means of averting it, and is in the nature of a new guarantee 
for increased cohesion, happiness and strength. I believe history 
and posterity will consign to disgrace the memory of every man, 
be he who he may, on whichever side of the channel he may dwell, 
that, having the power to aid in an equitable arrangement between 
Ireland and Great Britain, shall use the power, not to aid, but 
to prevent or retard it." 

Lord Salisbury was next with an ambiguous statement which 
left one wondering what his attitude was. Then Mr. Childers, 
Gladstone's friend, gave his views : 

"He was ready, he said, to give Ireland a large measure of 
local self-government. He would have her to legislate for herself, 
reserving Imperial rights over foreign policy, military organisa- 
tion, external trade (including customs duties), the post office, 
the currency, the national debt, and the court of ultimate appeal." 

Parnell felt that this last statement represented Gladstone's 
views. He resolved to make sure. But Gladstone refused to be 
drawn. So Parnell, having listened long enough to the bidding, 
brought down the hammer in favour of the Tories. 

The result of the election was: 

Liberals 335 

Tories 249 

Liberal Majority 86 



654 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Parnell had a following of 86. He could give the Liberals a 
majority of 172 if they did his bidding. If not they went out of 
power. He had won. 

The Parliament of 1886 opened with the Tories still in power. 
The Queen's speech showed how hollow had been the Tory pro- 
fessions of sympathy with Ireland's aspirations. There was not 
a word in the speech about Home Rule, but there was a promise 
of further coercion. Lord Salisbury in 1885 sang a hymn of peace; 
now, having gained Parnell's support at the recent elections he 
intoned a note of menace. This was a shortsighted policy. That 
very night Parnell drove him from office. 

Mr. Gladstone assumed power once more. Allied with the 
Irish party he would have a possible one hundred and seventy-two 
majority. But it was evident also that there would be dissension 
in his own ranks on the Home Rule question. Hope was mingled 
with doubt. 

John Morley became Chief Secretary for Ireland. A consist- 
ent opponent of coercion, his appointment was welcome, and he 
was a Home Ruler in conviction, the Irish demand having been 
made overwhelmingly clear. 

Gladstone lost no time in framing his Home Rule Bill. It 
was anything but a satisfactory solution of the Irish question. The 
financial clauses in particular were unjust to Ireland. There were 
frequent negotiations between Parnell and Gladstone on this point, 
but Gladstone held his ground. Chamberlain was a possible dan- 
ger. Gladstone had frequent discussions with him but neither 
could Chamberlain convert Gladstone to his scheme of local coun- 
cils nor could Gladstone be persuaded to depart from the principle 
of an Irish Government. Parnell was not enthusiastic about the 
measure, but finally the Irish party decided to support it. 

While the negotiations were in progress an event occurred 
which shows us the might of Parnell's personality and the mean 
subterfuge to which a guilty secret may reduce a proud and haughty 
character. 

At the election of 1885 Parnell had taken the extraordinary 
step of running candidates for three seats in Liverpool. Only in 
one could he hope to win, in the Scotland division which was T. P. 
O'Connor's preserve. He nominated John Redmond for a second 
division, and he, himself, offered to contest a third. At the last 
moment Parnell retired, and so, for reasons unexplained, did the 
Liberal candidate. Captain O'Shea was nominated for the seat, 
and lost by a few votes. Parnell who had just denounced the Lib- 
erals in vitriolic terms, had worked might and main for this par- 



THE LADIES' LAND LEAGUE 655 

ticular Liberal. But stranger things were to follow. T. P. O'Con- 
nor had been elected for Galway, as well as for the Liverpool seat, 
and had resigned his seat in Galway. Parnell's nominee was Cap- 
tain O'Shea! 

A Whig for an Irish constituency! O'Connor, whom Parnell 
had interviewed, and who knew of his intentions, rushed across 
to Ireland hoping to have a local candidate nominated before Par- 
nell had taken action. On reaching Dublin he found to his con- 
sternation that Parnell had forestalled him. What was he to do? 
He consulted the other members then in Dublin, and all agreed 
with him that it would be treachery to Ireland, at that moment of 
crisis, to oppose Parnell. Healy and Biggar, however, believed 
in straight dealing, and had taken the first train to Galway. A 
local candidate was put up — a Mr. Lynch — and during the follow- 
ing week the two members lashed the temper of Galway into fury. 
With Northern directness, and in the plainest of language, Biggar 
laid bare the sordid secret supposed to underlie Parnell's action. 
Parnell all this time made no move. Wires to his parliamentary 
rooms remained unanswered. Nobody knew his private address. 
When it pleased him he came over. 

Accompanied by O'Connor, O'Kelly and Sexton he set out for 
Galway. All except himself were in a fever of apprehension. He 
showed no feeling. Galway elections have always been pretty hot 
affairs, and this occasion was exceptional. The scene at the Gal- 
way station exceeded the worst anticipations. A howling, groan- 
ing populace crowded all the approaches to the Station. Mr. 
Lynch was delivering an impassioned address from the steps of 
the Railway Hotel. Parnell coolly went to his room, washed and 
dressed. Then he met Healy, Biggar and the others. Healy, not 
without passion, explained his position. Parnell listened quietly. 
Some reference to Parnell's leadership had been raised. "I have 
no intention of resigning my position," he said. "I would not re- 
sign it if the people of Galway were to kick me through the streets 
to-day." Healy capitulated. Biggar then felt he had been badly 
let down. Healy had deserted him. The local candidate was 
called in, and told what had happened. A pubhc meeting was held. 
Parnell faced an audience whose hostility was unmistakable. In 
the course of a powerful speech he said: "I have a parliament 
for College Green within the hollow of my hand." He referred 
to the possible rejection of O'Shea : "There will rise ?. shout," 
he said, "from all the enemies of Ireland: 'Parnell is beaten, Ire- 
land has no longer a leader.' " The day was won; O'Shea was 
elected. 



CsS THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Parnell, however, was mistaken. Gladstone's Home Rule Bill 
was defeated by three hundred and forty-three to three hundred 
and thirteen votes, and once more a general election followed. 
Parnell and the Liberals, who were at daggers drawn In December, 
1885, were now going forAvard hand In hand. The election was 
soon over giving the Tories a majority over Irish and Liberals of 
one hundred and eighteen. 

Lord Salisbury was again in power and would like to score over 
the Liberals by showing that where Gladstone had failed he could 
rule Ireland without coercion. 

In the end of 1886 the Plan of Campaign was launched by 
William O'Brien and John Dillon. Parnell was ill, and was not 
consulted abou*- it; when it was expounded to him he did not like 
it. The basis of the plan was as follows: A Managing Commit- 
tee was to be elected for each district. The tenants should offer 
the landlord a fair rent: If this was refused the total fair rents 
should be banked with the Committee, and the Committee should 
deal with the landlords. If the landlords refused to come to terms 
the money should be used to support evicted tenants, and for gen- 
eral purposes of the agitation. 

All the turmoil of the early 'eighties was renewed and continued 
during 1887, 1888, 1889. Lord Salisbury was convinced in 1886 
that revision of judicial rents fixed under the Act of 1881 would 
be "neither honest nor expedient." In 1887 he passed a Land 
Act allowing the revision of these judicial rents. Parnell was pres- 
ent and enjoyed this somersault of the Tory party. His own Bill 
on similar lines had been contemptuously rejected the previous 
year. His sensible and moderate measure had been rejected; then 
came the Plan of Campaign; and then the Tories began to take 
notice. Herein we have an epitome of the history of all ameliora- 
tive legislation by England for Ireland. 

But, of course, the Land Bill only came after a stringent Coer- 
cion Bill. This gave Gladstone and the Liberals a fine opportunity 
of poking fun at Salisbury, the pacifist of 1885. Mr. Arthur 
Balfour, nephew of the Prime Minister, had by this time become 
Chief Secretary. He ably supported the Bill which became law, 
and made himself responsible for carrying it out, and right loyally 
did he execute his task. He proclaimed the National League a 
month after the Act was passed. League rooms were entered, 
literature and accounts carried away, meetings and newspapers 
suppressed. Resident Magistrates alone sat on the bench, political 
prisoners were treated as ordinary criminals, police and military 
in enormous numbers were disposed through the country, with 



THE LADIES' LAND LEAGUE 657 

orders "not to hesitate to shoot." Priests identified with the move- 
ment could not go on a sick call without being tracked by police 
spies. CoUisions occurred in all parts of the country, with casual- 
ties on both sides, but naturally the unarmed people were at a 
disadvantage, and there were several civilian deaths from stabbing 
and gunshot. A boy was sent to prison for grinning at a police- 
man; a girl of twelve for conspiracy to obstruct the sheriff's 
officers; a man for winking in the market place, at the pig of a boy- 
cotted one. The worst case was that of Mitchelstown in Septem- 
ber, 1887. A public meeting was held. English as well as Irish 
speakers, including Mr. Dillon, were present. A Government re- 
porter arriving late, with a police escort, tried to force his way 
through the crowd. The peaceful people were jostled about, and 
exasperated by this attack on free speech, attacked their assailants 
with sticks. The latter retired to barracks and from this vantage 
ground deliberately fired on the multitude. Three men were killed 
and a verdict of wilful murder was returned against the police at 
the coroner's inquest, but no action was taken. John Mandeville 
of Mitchelstown died as a result of brutal treatment in prison. 
Thus, in Ireland, was celebrated the Jubilee Year of the Queen 
of England's reign. 

United Ireland in those days was spicy reading. Those of us 
who were children at the time enjoyed weekly the cartoons of Bal- 
four, who was presented to us spider-legged, malevolent, and 
waspish in appearance. It came as a surprise to us in later years 
to learn that Balfour, brutal as he proved himself in practice, was 
a philosopher of parts and had written books ! 

Balfour, having imprisoned at least three distinguished priests 
— Canon Keller of Youghal, Father Matt Ryan of Tipperary, 
and Father McFadden of Gweedore, appealed for assistance to 
the Pope. Cardinal Persico was sent to Ireland. In 1888 was 
issued a Papal Rescript condemning the Plan of Campaign. Car- 
dinal Persico was, of course, blamed for this; but truth will out. 
The Persico letters have been since published, and it is now known 
that he was blameless. The Rescript was the result of English 
diplomacy at Rome. 

But worse things were coming. A sinister plot to ruin Parnell 
was started in England. In the spring of 1887 a series of articles 
in the London Times appeared under the heading Parnellism and 
Crime. Alleged letters of Parnell were used for the purpose of 
connecting him with the Phoenix Park murders, and the physical 
force movement generally. Parnell at last demanded a select 
committee of the House of Commons to inquire into the matter. 



658 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Instead, the Government appointed a special commission of three 
judges to make the enquiry. The commission was given carte 
blanche to open up the whole conduct of the agitation in Ireland. 
Not Parnell alone but all Ireland was in the dock. 

Witnesses came in droves. Spies, policemen, officials, farmers, 
agents, informers — all were baited with gold into the net of the 
Times. 

Time dragged wearily on until in February 1889 Richard Pig- 
gott entered the witness chair. He was well known as an impecu- 
nious journalist, always "on the make." In 1888 he applied to 
Forster offering to assist the Government for a trifle of £1,500 
down, and then to Patrick Egan offering to assist the League on 
similar terms. But let his variegated career pass. He went into 
the witness-box, gave his evidence, and then Sir Charles Russell, 
Pamell's Counsel, took him in hands. Handing him pen and paper 
Russell put him through a spelling exercise. The last word dic- 
tated was "hesitancy." Piggott spelled it "hesitency." So was it 
spelled in one of the alleged facsimile letters! But Russell had 
another rod in pickle. Four days before the letters appeared in 
the Times Piggott had written to Doctor Walsh, Archbishop of 
Dublin, saying that a plot was laid for Parnell, that certain in- 
criminatory letters were to be published, and how should he warn 
the National leaders? Piggott fell to pieces. He contradicted 
himself hopelessly. Everything was clear. Copies of Archbishop 
Walsh's replies to him were produced in Court. 

The unfortunate man cleared the country at once and was traced 
to Madrid. Here at his hotel a Spanish Inspector of Police called. 
Piggott retired to his room, took up a pistol and blew out his 
brains. Interest in the commission was now at an end. When 
it resumed its adjourned session Mr. Biggar addressed the judges. 
He spoke for some twenty minutes, not wishing to occupy their 
time as his friend, Mr. Davitt, wished to make a few observations. 
Mr. Davitt's remarks only occupied five days ! 

One interesting question remains. It is this. Who paid for 
Piggott's passage and expenses to Madrid? 



CHAPTER LXXVI 

FALL OF PARNELL AND OF PARLIAMENTARIANISM 

Parnell was now the man of the hour. He had triumphed over 
all who had crossed his path. He had broken Forster; he had 
humbled even Gladstone. He had beaten the most elaborate con- 
spiracy ever launched against a politician and supported by one 
of the greatest newspaper syndicates in the world. Again and 
again he had changed the tune of the Government from "the Gov- 
ernment will" to "the Government must." He was feted and 
lionised; he was entertained by exclusive clubs, and was the guest 
of honour at such society functions as he would attend. He was 
presented with the freedom of the city of Edinburgh. His recep- 
tion in the House of Commons was flattering in the extreme, and 
on one occasion when some murmurs arose from the Tory benches 
against the assertion of a member that the case against him was 
based on forgery, he rose in his place and dared any member of 
that body in the House to indicate by word, or nod, or gesture 
that he did not believe this to be the case. There was no response. 
He seemed absolutely master of the situation, the dictator of pol- 
icy, the ruling force in the House of Commons, unquestioned chief 
of his own party by dint of his personality, and master of other 
parties by reason of his magnificent and seemingly instinctive di- 
plomacy. And then the blow fell! 

Captain O'Shea, who had given what was meant to be damag- 
ing proof against him at the Times Commission, filed a petition for 
divorce against his wife, naming Parnell as co-respondent. There 
was no defence, and no appearance for the defence. Parnell 
ignored the whole business as if it were of no importance, what- 
ever. When the decree was made absolute he promptly married 
Mrs. O'Shea. 

If others had taken matters as coolly as Parnell, it might have 
been better. But a meeting of the party was called at the Leinster 
Hall, Dublin, and a resolution of confidence in Parnell's leader- 
ship was passed. The delegates at the time in America — O'Con- 
nor, O' Kelly, O'Brien, Dillon and others were asked to cable a 

659 



66o THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

resolution of confidence in Parnell, and this was in due course 
done. Mr. T. D. Sullivan alone, of those in contact with each 
other, reserved judgment. He was sharply criticised for his reti- 
cence, but he had this consolation : that while the others went back 
on their words later, he had nothing to retract. 

A meeting of the Irish Party was held, and Parnell was re- 
elected sessional chairman without a dissentient voice. It was 
known to Justin McCarthy, and must also have been known to 
Parnell, that Gladstone had prepared a letter in which he stated 
that Parnell's continuance in the leadership of the Irish Party would 
be productive of consequences disastrous in the highest degree to 
the cause of Ireland and would render his retention of the leader- 
ship of the Liberal party almost a nullity. 

This was the letter of a political strategist. Gladstone did not 
say that he would resign his leadership. He did not say that he 
would wash his hands of legislation for Ireland. In plain fact he 
said nothing tangible at all, except that Parnell's leadership pleased 
him no longer. 

Parnell replied in a long manifesto which he submitted to a 
number of members of his party — the Redmonds, O'Kelly, Leamy, 
Col. Nolan, Justin McCarthy. He asked not to be thrown to the 
"English wolves," now howling for his destruction. He disclosed 
all his negotiations with the Liberals, and showed that his chair- 
manship from the Liberal point of view did not matter in the least; 
that Liberals would proceed on their pre-arranged plans whether 
he was leader or not, but that as leader he might be able to counter 
them. Bribes offered him by the Liberals he disclosed: the Chief 
Secretaryship for himself; one of the law-officershlps of the Crown 
for a colleague, and so forth. He had rejected all these offers 
valuing the independence of his party more than anything else. 
He lifted a corner of the veil Avhich had screened his negotiations 
with the Liberals, and pointed out that his leadership had nothing 
to do with Liberal policy which was settled and in gear, though 
possibly it might interfere with its smooth working if he was con- 
tinued in power. 

There was a moment of tension. Then Justin McCarthy spoke. 
He disapproved of the manifesto from beginning to end. Par- 
nell urged him for particulars. He objected to it all especially 
the words "English wolves." "I will not change them," Parnell 
said, "zvhatevej- goes out, these words shall not go out." The 
"split" was thenceforward in being. 

In the heart of the controversy which followed the truth was 
submerged under ex-parte pleadings on either side. Gladstone was 



FALL OF PARNELL 66 1 

accused of sacrificing Parnell, though for years he had been well 
aware of the relations between Parnell and Mrs. O'Shea. Mrs. 
O'Shea had in fact acted as envoy to him, again and again, from 
Parnell. But in fair play it must be said that whatever Gladstone 
suspected he had no proof. When the matter became public he had 
to consider the attitude of his party and electorate and was not 
really one of the "English wolves," though for aught we know he 
may have been glad of Parnell's downfall. Morley was asked if 
Parnell would retire if found guilty. "He will not," said Morley, 
"he will remain where he is, and he is quite right." 

The Irish Party met. Parnell simxply asked them not to sell 
him without getting his value. "Gentlemen," said Parnell, "it is 
not for you to act in this matter. You are dealing with a man who 
is an unrivalled sophist. You are dealing with a man to whom it 
is as impossible to give a direct answer to a plain and simple ques- 
tion, as it is for me impossible to give an indirect answer to a plam 
and simple question. You are dealing with a man who is capable 
of appealing to the constituencies for a majority which would 
make him independent of the Irish Party. And if I surrender to 
him, if I give up my position to him — if you throw me to him, I 
say, gentlemen, that it is your bounden duty to see that you secure 
value for the sacrifice. How can you secure this value? You can 
secure this value by making up your m.inds as to what these provi- 
sions in the next Home Rule Bill should be." 

Envoys of the party called on Mr. Gladstone and they learned 
the nothing which deputations learn of Cabinet Ministers. It was 
a duel between Parnell and Gladstone. The latter won. On De- 
cember 6th, 1890, Mr. Justin McCarthy withdrew with forty-four 
followers; Parnell was left with twenty-six. 

Then came the Kilkenny election and Parnell crossed over to 
Ireland. But before going to Kilkenny there was work to be done 
in Dublin, United Ireland bought by Parnell, and for long bril- 
Ikntly edited by William O'Brien, had, under the direction of 
Mathias McD. Bodkin, gone over to the enemy! On the morning 
of December i8th, 1890, a call was made at the office. A Fenian, 
a follower of Parnell, approached the acting editor and said: 
"Matty, will you walk out, or would you like to be thrown out?" 
Matty decided for the less exciting manner of exit. 

That night, at a wonderful meeting in the Rotunda, Parnell 
spoke a sentence that lived for ever in the hearts of those who 
heard it, and ought to live in the hearts of their descendants. He 
said: 

"I don't pretend that I had not moments of trial and of tempta- 



662 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

tion, but I do claim that never in thought, word, or deed, have I 
been false to the trust which Irishmen have confided in me." 

Next morning before setting out for Cork he had to re-conquer 
United Ireland which had been re-captured by the enemy. With 
the assistance of a vast crowd he did so, and then drove to Kings- 
bridge and took his train for Cork. An immense crowd followed 
him to the terminus at Kingsbridge and Parnell made a royal de- 
parture declaring that what Dublin said to-day all Ireland would 
say to-morrow. 

There were disappointments ahead, however. His candidate 
for a by-election in Kilkenny was beaten by two to one, and a 
little later in North Sligo the Parnellite candidate met with a simi- 
lar fate. Later his candidate was defeated in Carlow. It was 
obvious that Parnell either miscalculated the forces against him, 
or was determined to fight to the last even if he fought alone. 

By the end of the year Mr. William O'Brien had returned from 
America to France. There was a whitewashed cell awaiting him 
in Ireland, and he decided to remain, for the time being, in Bou- 
logne. Here Parnell, in the interests of peace, agreed to meet 
him. O'Brien, however, found Parnell unyielding. This is not 
surprising, inasmuch as the terms of peace suggested by Mr. 
O'Brien were such, and involved so many people — the Bishops, 
Gladstone, and both sections of the divided Irish Party — that Par- 
nell saw at once that a peace by negotiation was impossible and 
thenceforward devoted his great gifts of strategy to sowing the 
seeds of dissension among his opponents. Ostensibly he was try- 
ing to get his opponents and the peacemakers to extract promises 
from Gladstone and the Liberals regarding details relating to land 
and the police in any forthcoming Home Rule Bill — a re-asser- 
tion of his attitude that he should not be sold for less than his 
price. He and William O'Brien were to be the judges of the value 
of the promises made by the Liberals. As was to be expected, 
they disagreed. Mr. O'Brien seemed to be satisfied with a memo- 
randum containing the points of a letter which Gladstone was pre- 
pared to publish. Parnell was not. It is not now, and it was not 
then, an easy matter to decide whether Parnell in the course of 
these negotiations was really striving for peace, or waging diplo- 
matic war. In either case he was forcing O'Brien and the others 
to exact conditions from the Liberals. In the midst of much mis- 
chief he was to this extent doing good, although it has to be ad- 
mitted that he openly mocked at the chance of one of his former 
colleagues getting any reliable guarantee from Gladstone, the un- 
rivalled sophist. Still he said: "Some good may come of these 



FALL OF PARNELL 663 

negotiations. We may pin the Liberals to something definite yet." 
O'Brien and Dillon came across to England and were promptly 
dispatched to Galway jail. On their release, some months later 
they both declared against Parnell. On this account they came 
in for a good deal of criticism, mostly undeserved. Parnell's jibe 
at them summarised and concentrated It. "Some of the seceders," 
he said, "the majority of them — have changed only twice. Mr. 
Dillon and Mr. O'Brien have changed four times." It was not 
fair; men who are working for peace may be forced by circum- 
stances to make many changes, and Parnell himself had not been 
as consistent as he pretended. In fact it was only after "the split" 
that he discovered the cloven hoof of the Liberal party; up to 
the date of his "manifesto" he had been exploiting Gladstone and 
the alliance with the Liberals. It Is true that his strictures on Glad- 
stone's propositions had reference to the end of the year 1889. 
But it Is fairly evident that if Gladstone's letter to Morley had not 
been published, if dissension had not been fomented in the Irish 
party, there would have been no question of Gladstone's sincerity. 
Parnell worked very hard during these few years of strife. 
He was far from well; his medical advisers counselled rest and 
quiet; but Parnell was ubiquitous. He put into this personal con- 
flict more energy in one year than he had expended in the House 
of Commons In the preceding eight. His friends told him that he 
was killing himself — but in vain. 

In the meantime, the Tory Government was giving, along with 
plenty of coercion, some "ameliorative" legislation. Measures 
were adopted to cope with the failure of the potato crop. Irish 
railway development was taken in hand; a Bill for Land Purchase 
Avas introduced, and the Congested Districts Act was an enactment 
that contained a good deal of promise which has been realised 
only in part. A new Board was constituted, but its powers of trans- 
fer of tenants from congested areas were so limited that even to- 
day we have families living In absolute poverty In parts of Ireland 
while over the rich plains of the midlands the low of the bullock 
has replaced the merry prattle of children, the whistle of the 
ploughman behind his team, the swish of the caman on the hurling 
field and the song of the girls scutching flax or feeding the quaint 
and beautiful little tuirne} Landlordism had claimed the land. 
The law allowed it and the courts awarded it. The people had 
to go, and the palatial bawn represents scores of vanished home- 
steads. On the outskirts of huge, unpeooled ranches we still find 

1 Spinning wheel. 



664 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

a hardy and industrious race cultivating marsh and moor, hoping, 
often in vain, to take out a crop before the substance of the soil 
is again claimed for the support of the rush and of the heather. 

Irishmen are kind to the memory of Parnell. He sinned, and 
he was punished. No other man — not even O'Connell — always 
excepting men who had sealed their allegiance to Dark Rosaleen 
with their blood — was more dearly beloved by the Irish Catholic 
people than this Protestant. The people of Ireland were all Par- 
nelllte at heart. They did not wish to oppose him. If he had 
only bowed for a time before the storm he would have come back 
in triumph. But Parnell was too proud for compromise. He 
would lead or break the Irish Party. He tried diplomacy. But, 
in Ireland, at least, there Is a greater force, which sometimes be- 
comes powerful. It is truth." 

Parnell's last meeting was at Creggs, County Galway. He was 
warned by his medical advisers not to go. He had promised to 
go, and he went. This was on September 27th, 1891. There was 
death in his face, as he delivered his speech. On October 6th, he 
died at Brighton. He was buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin, 
close beside O'Connell, His funeral cortege was magnificent, and 
on the Sunday nearest his anniversary, a pilgrimage is made an- 
nually to his grave, which is always adorned by flowers, the gift 
of many nameless friends. 

Parnell was adored by the Irish and feared by the English. 
Nobody, even among his followers, could foretell his attitude to- 
wards a measure in Parliament. He often seemed to m.ake up his 
mind in a moment. He seemed to have what we may call political 
instinct, an instinct dangerous to the stability of Governments. 
Gladstone, the one statesman who could be compared with him, 
regarded him as an "intellectual phenomenon," 

And now Parnell passes from the scene for ever, and there 
Is a vacancy that no member of his followers Is able or willing to 
fill. Sexton was out of the ordinary in many ways; but he had 
practically retired. Healy was brilliant, "the one political brain 
amongst them," said Parnell, but he had not the gifts requisite In 
a leader. Parnell professed to be willing to hand over his leader- 
ship to Healy, but the sincerity of the proposal is open to doubt. 
The rents and rifts in the party made it Impossible to select a 
leader of the whole. 

Shortly after Parnell's death there was a General Election. 

2 It is hardly necessary to say that sincere Irishmen still hold opposite opinions 
upon the right or wrong of Parnell's stand. 



FALL OF PARNELL 665 

Gladstone had a working majority of about forty-two. The Home 
Rule Bill of 1893 was passed in the House of Commons by a ma- 
jority of forty-three. It was rejected by the House of Lords. 
Next year the "Grand Old Man" resigned and was succeeded by 
Lord Rosebery. 

John Redmond's party (the Parnellites), Dillon's party, 
O'Brien's party and Healy's party, floundered rather hopelessly 
for years, disputing plenty, achieving little. 

In 1897 the Report of a Commission temporarily re-united 
the various shades of Irish opinion. The Royal Commission on 
taxation discovered, among other things, that Ireland was being 
taxed at over £3,000,000 a year beyond her obligations under the 
enforced Act of Union. The report of the Commission was put 
on the shelf along with many other reports, and in the face ©f it, 
Mr. Balfour announced in the House of Commons that Ireland 
was really a financial loss to the Empire! Restitution to Ireland 
of the vast sum of which she had been robbed (in 50 years £150 
million) was, of course, point blank refused. 

A Land Act had been introduced In 1896. It gave a good bribe 
to the landlords and substantial relief to the tenants. The Local 
Government Act of 1898 displaced the Grand Juries and trans- 
ferred control of local affairs to popularly elected bodies. In 
1899 the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction 
was instituted owing chiefly to the work and inflnence of Mr. Horace 
Plunket. 

Meanwhile, the Parnellites, led by Mr. John Redmond, though 
a poor minority, held their ground, and resisted all attempts at 
compromise. In 1898 Mr. Dillon effected a compromise and 
agreed to resign in behalf of a Parnellite leader. John Redmond, 
supported by a handful of followers, accepted the office and be- 
came leader of the united party in 1900. The United Irish League 
formed by Mr. William O'Brien in 1898 gave the united party 
an organisation at their back. The League was a good effort to 
get the seat of agitation transferred from Westminster to Ireland. 
But its new heads, hypnotised by Westminster, did not develop it 
in Its natural way. And it never became a great force. 

During the Boer war which broke out In 1899 the sympathies 
of the Irish people were, of course, on the side of the Boers, and 
no attempt was made to dissemble the delight In Ireland when the 
Boers scored a victory over the English. Major John MacBride 
held command of an Irish Brigade fighting with the Boer forcas. 

In 1902 on the initiative of Captain Shawe-Taylor, a Galway 
landlord, representatives of landlords and tenants met in confer- 



666 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

ence to investigate the possibility of an agreed solution of the Land 
Question. An agreement was reached on the basis of long term 
purchase which would secure the landlords against loss, and while 
making the purchase money of their farms higher to the tenants 
would enable them to secure money at a low rate of interest, and 
secure them their land at a fixed annuity which would be lower 
than the actual rent. 

Mr. George Wyndham, Chief Secretary, proceeded to give 
effect to these recommendations and the result was the Land Act 
of 1903. It was a measure welcomed by the tenants who wished 
to be rid of the landlords at all costs, and by the landlords who got 
a very good bargain by the sale of their estates for cash that in 
many instances w^as very urgently needed. 

A move by Lord Dunraven and others to bring about by con- 
ference a solution of the question of self-government for Ireland 
by means of an enlargement of local government was not so suc- 
cessful. The Orange element was alarmed. They pointed out 
that a Tory government had placed a papist — Sir Anthony (now 
Lord) McDonnell, Under Secretary, in virtual control of Ireland. 

In 1906 Mr. Davitt passed away. He lies in his native Straide 
close to the home from which, as a child, English aggression drove 
him in support of the landlordism whose power it was his man- 
hood's task to break. He succeeded; and dear to Irish hearts is 
that grave in Mayo which encloses the mortal remains of a man 
whose spirit could not be broken. 

In 1906, also, the Liberals returned to power. Mr. Birrell 
was appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland. His first legislative 
effort was an Irish Councils Bill, a sort of enlargement of the 
Local Government Act. Mr. Redmond favoured the measure; 
but having learned the temper of Ireland, he had to reject it. 

In 19 14 a so-called "Home Rule" Act was passed — empower- 
ing the Irish people to play at a "Parliament" in Dublin, whose 
enactments could be vetoed by either the British Lord Lieutenant 
or the British Parliament — or ruled illegal by the High Court of 
Justice! Also it provided that Ireland's finances should chiefly re- 
main in England's hands! The Irish Parliamentary Party, grasp- 
ing at any straw that might save it from being finally engulfed, 
begged Ireland to believe that this was the nation's "great charter 
of liberty." (Such was the phrase actually in daily use by the 
Party.) And Mr. John Dillon in the House of Commons sol- 
emnly pledged, for Ireland and the Irish Parliamentary Party, 
that the Act would be accepted as a full and final settlement of 



FALL OF PARNELL 667 

Ireland's claims 1 ^ When the "Home Rule" Bill became law, it 
was postponed on the plea that the war was on — in reality be- 
cause Sir Edward Carson forbade its application. The British 
Government kept postponing it period after period, till eventually 
it never went into force. The Irish people, most of whom 
had at first been deceived into regarding it as a desirable step to- 
ward larger liberty, eventually disillusioned, would not in the end 
accept it. 

The dreary years from 1892 onwards, characterised by strife 
and bitterness and the growth of dictatorial management of Irish 
affairs by the Parliamentarians, were not without some good re- 
sults. Honest and patriotic men and women in Ireland grew tired 
of the squabbles of rival politicians, of the m»anipulation of par- 
liamentary and local elections, of the general corruption of public 
life, and, falling back on first principles, endeavoured to plan a 
future for Ireland far different from that in the dreams of the pro- 
vincialist politicians. National consciousness was awakening, and 
the intellect of Ireland found expression, first in the Sean Bhean 
Bhocht of Belfast edited by Ethna Carbery and Alice Milligan, 
and afterwards in the United Irishman of Dublin edited by Arthur 
Griffith and contributed to by William Rooney. The Gaelic League 
had been estabhshed, and by slow degrees the Irish people were 
taught to rely on themselves, to rebuild their ancient, though shat- 
tered civilisation, to rediscover their soul as a people, and confront 
the world as an ancient, cultured and dignified race, and no longer 
an obscure beggar seeking for English doles. And worthily did 
the best of the Irish race respond to this appeal. No greater 
sacrifice of personal interests can be recorded in the world than 
the work expended in Ireland during the past three decades. Father 
O'Growney gave his life for the language; William Rooney for 
the national cause generally; Pearse, McDonagh and their com- 
rades have faced the firing squad; and among the host of those 

3 The Party had been rapidly sinking in self-respect for a quarter of a cen- 
tury — ^but in the last nine years of this time had gone down hill with accelerated 
velocity. It became the official "tail" of the British Liberals, and obediently wagged 
as the dog willed. For the older, wise, and well proved maxim, "England's diffi- 
culty is Ireland's opportunity," the Party adopted as its slogan : "Don't embarrass 
the Government!" — till the slogan and its users passed into a joke. In reward for 
the unworthy services rendered to the Liberals, the members of the Party were 
permitted to scramble for the crumbs that fell from their masters' table. For al- 
though they still went through the form of gravely subscribing to the pledge that 
Parnell had seen it necessary to prescribe — the solemn pledge that no one of them 
would accept, or ask, from an English Government, office or favour for himself or 
friends — there was furious scramble among them for the offices and favours — often- 
times ludicrously petty ones — that Dublin Castle had in its gift. 



668 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

who have given up their lives for the preservation of an Irish Ire- 
land are numbers of unnamed and forgotten men and women who 
were prepared to work in obscurity and neglect, that Ireland might 
live. 

This remarkable resurgence of national self-respect was looked 
OH askance by the political leaders whose vision was limited to 
action in the English House of Commons. The intellectual phase 
of the Irish movement they heartily disliked. Criticism of "the 
Party" was speedily suppressed. The Party controlled nearly all 
the newspapers of Ireland and woe betide the journalist who took 
any liberties in criticism of the Kings. They would not trust the 
intellect of Young Ireland. And thus for thirty years and more 
the Party sat on a mine which was certain to explode some day. 
They, themselves, provided the fuse. In the English House of 
Cammons John Redmond, in 19 14, unreservedly offered the ser- 
vices of the manhood of Ireland in one of England's wars. Earl 
Grey was happy to announce that Ireland was "the one bright 
spot" on the horizon. Then, Mr. Redmond, having gone so far 
was forced to go further; and when at Woodenbridge, County 
Wicklow, he advised the Irish Volunteers to go to war for Eng- 
land, he, fortunately, sounded the final knell of the "Party." 

The ParHamentary leaders, Redmond, Dillon, Davitt, Devlin, 
O'Connor, came out openly as England's recruiting sergeants — 
and their followers in the country, the scales at length fallen from 
their eyes, began a wholesale desertion — which in startlingly short 
time left the leaders looking in vain to find any followers. They 
were to be formally wiped out at the next general election. The 
Irish Parliamentary Party, having compromised Ireland's every 
claim to nationhood, and touched the depths of disgrace, then dis- 
appeared from history. And Ireland severed itself from the bad 
tradition of British Parliamentarianism. 

William O'Brien's Recollections and Evening Memories. 
T. ?. O'Connor's Parnell Movement. 
Michael Davitt's Fall of Feudalism. 
Mrs. Dickenson's A Patriot's Mistake. 
Barrv O'Brien's Life of Parnell. 



CHAPTER LXXVII 

THE MODERI>f LITERATURE OF IRELAND 

I. Modern Gaelic Literature 

The last writers in the ancient bardic dialect, the three O'Clerys 
and O'Miilconry, four friars who have beea Immortalised as the 
Four Masters, in the early 17th century collected all the old manu- 
scripts they could find, and in Donegal Abbey wrote their mighty 
Annals that, though the nation, as they feared, should perish, the 
names of the great ones at least should be preserved. They praised 
and dispraised Gael and Englishman with perfect impartiality — 
evidence that their minds were still untuned to the new world of 
warring states. "They belonged to the old. Individual, poetic life, 
and spoke a language even, in which it was all but impossible to 
think an abstract thought." ^ 

1 THE FOUR MASTERS 

BY THOMAS d'aRCY MC GEE 

Many altars are in Banba, many chancels hung in white, 

Many schools and many abbeys, glorious in our fathers' sight; 

Yet whene'er I go a pilgrim back, dear Native Isle, to thee, 

May my filial footsteps bear me to that Abbey by the sea — 

To that Abbey — roofless, doorless, shrineless, monkless, though it be ! 

I still hear them in my musings, still see them as I gaze, — 
Four meek men around the dresset, reading scrolls of other days ; 
Four unwearied scribes who treasure every word and every line — 
Saving every ancient sentence as if writ by hands divine. 

Not of fame, and not of fortune, do these eager penmen dream ; 
Darkness shrouds the hills of Banba, sorrow sits by every stream ; 
One by one the lights that lead her, hour by hour, are quenched in gloom ; 
But the patient, sad. Four Masters toil on in their lonely room — 
Duty still defying Doom. 

As the breathing of the west winds over bound and bearded sheaves — 
As the murmur in the bee-hives softly heard on summer eves — 
So the rustle of the vellum, — so the anxious voices sound ; — 
While a deep expectant silence seems to listen all around. 

Brightly on the Abbey gable shines the full moon thro' the night, 
While afar to westward glances all the bay in waves of light : 

669 



-670 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

After the disastrous Elizabethan wars, Ireland was stripped of 
her forests. Partly this was done for plunder, but chiefly to de- 
stroy all refuges and cover. From being an island Lebanon, Ire- 
land became the gaunt, naked, shelterless expanse that it is to-day. 
"The wandering companies that keep the wood" were gone, and 
the modern period set in. With the sweeping away of the proud, 
aristocratic order of Gaeldom, Irish literature became impover- 
ished, and yet, by an accident, the greatest of all Irish writers, 
Goeffrey Keating, was the first eminent "popular" writer. 

Returning from Spain a doctor of divinity, Keating won fame 
as a preacher in County Tipperary. On a certain occasion, he 
preached m the presence of a lady whose name was associated with 
that of Carew, the Lord President of Munster, a sermon calculated 
to give as much offence as John the Baptist's reproof of Herod. 
The anti-popery laws were put In motion through Carew's per- 
sonal spite, and Keating had to fly. Hiding in the Glen of Aher- 
low, he composed his celebrated Fonts Fcasa ar Eir'inn, or 
History of Ireland, which was and is the standard work of Irish 
prose. Hundreds'of manuscript copies were made. Several Eng- 
lish translations exist, one by John O'Mahony, the Fenian Head 
Centre in America. Keating also composed religious works, one 
of which, the Three Shafts of Death, is full of spirited moral tales 
told with the story-telling zest that makes the History so readable. 
Thus Keating writes of a wild and ignorant kern of Munster who 
went exploring and landing in England, was sumptuously enter- 
tained at the first great house he came to. When, at last, sated 
v\^ith good living, he and his company made to depart, the keeper 
of the house cried to his accountant: Make reckoning — English 
words that the kern did not understand. The accountant there- 
Tufted isle and siHinter'd headland smile and soften in her ray; 
Yet wifhin their dusky chamber the meek Masters toil away, 
Finding all too short the day. 

Now they kneel! oh, list the accents, from the soul of mourners wrung; 
Hear the soaring aspirations in the old ancestral tongue ; 
For the houseless sons of chieftains, for their brethren near and far, 
For the mourning Mother Island these their aspirations are. 

And they say before up-rising: "Father! grant one other pray'r. 
Bless the Lord of Moy — O'Gara ! Bless his lady and his heir ! 
Send the generous Chief, whose bounty cheers, sustains us, in our task, 
Health, success, renown, salvation : Feather ! grant the prayer we ask." 

Oh, that we, who now inherit the great bequest of their toil. — 
Were but fit to trace their footsteps through the annals of the Isle; 
Oh, that the same angel. Duty, guardian of our tasks might be : 
Teach us, as she taught our Masters, faithful, grateful, just, to be: — 
As she taught the old Four Masters in the Abbey by the sea ! 



THE MODERN LITERATURE OF IRELAND 671 

with stripped the visitors of their goods, sending them bare away: 
for the house was an Inn. The kern was much puzzled, for never 
before had he known food bought or sold. Coming home, he told 
his friends that England was a wonderful country for food and 
drink and hospitality, only when strangers were leaving their en- 
tertainer, a violent fellow called MacRaicin was called down to 
despoil them. Keating adds that "England is the earth; the inn- 
keepers, the world, the flesh and the devil; the Kern, people in 
general, and MacRaicin — death!" 

Keating attended some of the last bardic schools, but he chose 
to write in a style to be "understanded of the people." His poetry 
is in the new lyrical style then coming in, breaking away from the 
severe old metres that only the learned could compose — or per- 
haps enjoy. He was a genuine poet, too. Witness this exile-song, 
of the typical Gaehc "catalogue" order: 

MO BHEANNACHT LEAT A SGRIBHINN 

M}^ blessing with thee, letter 
To the delightful isle of Eire, 
Mj' pity that I see not her hilltops 
Though oft their beacons blaze ! 

Farewell to her nobles and her people, 
Fond, fond farewell to her clergy, 
Farewell to her gentle womenkind, 
Farewell to her learned in letters! 

Farewell to her smooth plains, 
A thousand farewells to her hills, 
Hail to him who dwells there, 
Farewell to her pools and lakes! 

Farewell to her fruity woods, 
Farewell to her fishing weirs. 
Farewell to her bogs and lawns, 
Farewell to her raths and moors! 

Farewell from my heart to her harbours, 
Farewell, too, to her heavy pastures. 
Good-bye to her hillocks of fairs, 
Farewell to her bowed branches! 

Though battle-wi-ath be frequent 
In the holy heaven-favoured isle. 
Westward o'er the ocean's ridge, 
Bear, O writmg, my blessing! 



672 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

The difference between the old classical metres — used in Old 
and Middle Irish verse — and the free metres of modern Irish may 
briefly be explained by an imitation of a classical verse. Here is 
the original : 

Do chuadar as rinn mo ruisg 
Do tholcha is aluinn eaguisg, 
Is tuar orcra da n-eisi 
Dromla fhuar na h-aibheisi. 

Dr. Hyde gives an imitation of this, as follows: 

Slowh' pass my aching eye 
Her holy hills of beauty ; 
Neath me tossing to and fro 
Hoarse cries the crossing billow. 

Now those used to English verse can make little of this, be- 
yond the fact that there are seven syllables in each line. Note, 
however, that there is an intricate system of internal assonances 
and alliterations (slowly and holy, tossing and crossing, etc.) while 
the chief peculiarity is that the rhyming and syllables are not, as 
in English verse, equally stressed. Fro is stressed, but its rhyme 
is unstressed — "low" in billow. Further than this, it must be men- 
tioned that certain groups of letters were held to rhyme, so that 
"maid" rhymed with MacCabe, these groups being distinct and 
rigidly observed. From this it will be seen that classic Gaelic verse 
could not live as a popular art. Keating gave the popular forms 
of versification — already common in Scotland — a standing that they 
could not achieve while they were confined to folk-compositions, 
and soon after his days, the old metres disappeared. 

Daithi O'Bruadair, a poet of the Williamite wars, was the last 
aristocratic poet, but Egan O'Rahilly, who lived in the first half 
of the 1 8th century — the century of the Penal Laws, when Cath- 
olics, i.e., the nation, were forbidden the rudiments of education, 
had much of the austere dignity of the past in his st}'le. He it was 
\.ho composed ''Gile na Gile," the most refined and melodious of 
all those multi-rhyming songs in which, during the loth century, . 
Ireland was sung of as a discrowned maiden, Cathleen-ny-Hou!i- 
han, Shiela-ny-Gara, or Moirin-ny-Chuillenain, awaiting the King's 
son who should free her and enthrone her once more. 

Brightness of brightness came, in loneliness, advancing 
Crystal of crystal, her clear grey eyes were glancing, 



THE MODERN LITERATURE OF IRELAND 673 

Sweetness of sweetness, her soft words flowed entrancing, 
Redness and whiteness her cheek's fair form enhancing. 

A curious story, probably untrue, but quite typical of the times, 
tells that poor O'Rahilly was once standing by when a planter min- 
ister ordered a certain tree to be hewed down. The workers 
(Catholic hewers of wood and drawers of water) refused to lay 
axe to the trunk on account of some historic associations. The 
minister's son cHmbed the tree and began to hew branches, but fell, 
and was caught in a cleft and hanged. O'Rahilly at once made a 
verse beginning Is maith do thoradh a chrainn, viz., "Good is your 
fruit, O tree; may it flourish on every branch. My grief that the 
trees of Eire are not loaded with the same fruit every day!" 

Sean O'Neachtain of Meath, contemporary, composed sparkling 
lyrics comparable to nothing in English but Herrick, and wrote 
humorous tales satirising the Gaels of the day who talked broken 
English under the impression that they were speaking Shakespeare's 
tongue. Tarlach O'Carolan — best known as Carolan — lived about 
the same time. His meeting with Goldsmith has been written of 
ns a meeting of the dying Gaelic and the new-born Anglo-Irish 
literatures, but the conceit is scarcely justified, for Carolan was 
more musician than poet, merely writing words for tunes. His 
music was such that we may believe that, had Ireland been free 
to cultivate national art, he would have exalted the wonderful tradi- 
tional music into a lofty art, as Chopin did with the national music 
of Poland. 

Sean Clarach MacDonnell, at whose house In Co. Cork the 
"bardic sessions" of the southern poets, i.e., literary evenings as- 
sisted with good fare, were held, was more exuberant, more popu- 
lar, than any who had gone before him, and his passionate, joyous, 
rollicking songs are sung to this day. Sometimes, in serious mood, 
he drew terrible pictures of the plight of the Gael under the brutal 
foreign planters. Of one such usurper he declares that "he has 
tethered the famine In a cleft of the mountains to prey upon the 
people" — an Im^age terrible enough for iEschylus. 

Donacha Rua Macnamara Is chiefly remembered for his poem, 
"The Fair Hills of Eire O," which is so exquisite an exile-song, 
that a score of translations into English have been made : 

Take my heart's blessing over to dear Eire's strand 

And the fair hills of Eire O ! 
To the Remnant that love her — our forefather's land — 

Fair hills of Eire O ! 



674 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

How sweet sing the birds, o'er mount there and vale 
Like soft sounding chords, that lament for the Gael — 
And I o'er the surge, far, far away must wail 
The fair hills of Eire O ! 

It is particularly interesting to note, in the numerous popular 
poets, how the ancient heroic names occur in their songs. 
O'Tuama, keeper of a tavern, laments the passing of the Gaelic 
aristocracy, comparing them to "Warlike MacMorna, tremendous 
in the chase; gallant Oscar, spear-shatterer of legions; young, gen- 
erous Conall, bringer of help" — and in a final line that Virgil might 
envy, he cries: "Nior clos dom Gall ba dheallrach leo" [I never 
heard of Englishmen of their like!]. Thus did the heroic figures 
remain through the centuries symbols of the ideal, enriching the 
speech and thought of the people with beautiful allusions. To- 
wards the end of the i8th century we meet Eoghan Rua O'SuUivan, 
the most wonderful maker of adjectival symphonies who ever com- 
posed Gaelic verse. His songs are mighty rushes of melodious 
language, sense sometimes failing under sheer loveliness of sound. 
Swinburne is his faint reflex in modern English poetry. Yet this 
remarkable man worked as a farm labourer. It is recorded that 
his employer's son, puzzled by some passage of Greek set him by 
his tutor, was astonished to find O'Sullivan able to assist him! 

Merriman, author of The Midnight Court, may be mentioned 
as closing the i8th century. This lengthy and richly-phrased poem 
is a Rabelaisian skit on the contemporary shortage of marriage- 
able young men, and it stands unique in the Gaelic literature of that 
age in originality. Save the mannerism of their style, there was 
scarcely anything to distinguish one of the i8th century singers 
from another — all sang of love, of wine, of repentance and of 
Cathleen-ny-Houlihan in much the same style and even the same 
phrases; only Merriman stood apart, a man of piquant personality, 
daring wit and conscious literary artistry. 

Though the Munster poets were the most exuberant and are to- 
day the most famous, there was an important Northern school of 
song, of which MacCuarta, O'Doirnin, MacAlendon and Mac- 
Cooey are famous names. It is said, with some aptness, that the 
North had matter without style and the South style without matter. 
At least, the Northern writers, now being edited, display much 
strength and vigour of thought that is lacking in O'Sullivan. On 
the whole, the course of modern Irish poetry may be compared to 
the descent of a river from the first trickles at the frozen heights 
of classicism (O'Bruadair and O'Rahilly) to a growing stream 



THE MODERN LITERATURE OF IRELAND 675 

(O'Neachtain) which at last becomes a rushing torrent in the low 
country (O'Sullivan and his popular contemporaries). 

The Ulster school lived longest. In 1795 Belfast had a Gaelic 
magazine. Many of the Northern leaders in '98 were students of 
Gaelic, and a nascent revival was proceeding. Some of Maria 
Edgeworth's writings were done into Irish and printed in Belfast 
in 1833. A bardic session was held in Dundalk in 1820. Art 
Bennett, a Gaelic scribe, scholar and poet, was still living in Co. 
Armagh in 1879, and since men still living knew him, we may 
truly claim that Gaelic literature is, in the North, an unbroken 
continuity to this day. 

Early in the 19th century, the first gleams of the new dawn 
appeared. In the Penal night, Ireland had almost grown ashamed 
or forgetful of her past. But Petrie, O'Curry and O'Donovan, 
following some preliminary work by O'Reilly, the lexicographer, 
and Hardiman, the collector of songs, performed the great work 
which restored Ireland's traditions. These three giants unveiled 
the forgotten past in their researches into Gaelic typography and 
editing of Gaelic annals. O'Curry and O'Donovan were both poor 
and one might say despised labourers, but no men ever did such 
mighty nation-building as they. Tom Moore, writing an Irish his- 
tory, one day saw O'Curry working at the huge manuscripts of the 
Annals, and listened with amazement at the scholar's account of 
the sealed Gaelic literature. At last he said: "I ought never to 
have undertaken an Irish history. These great works were not 
written by fools, and I know nothing of them." He had sung of 
"the long-faded glories" of Eirinn, taking them all on trust. He 
and his generation knew nothing of the Irish past save what was 
revealed by hostile English historians and vague native tradition. 
O'Curry and O'Donovan gave Ireland back her national memory. 

Several academic societies did good work during the century 
In printing Gaelic classics — notably the Osslanic Society and the 
Society for the Preservation of the Irish Language. Standlsh 
Hayes O'Grady, the most prominent figure In these societies, was 
the greatest Gaelic litterateur after O'Donovan and O'Curry. In 
"Silva Gadelica," two huge volumes, he edited a large number of 
Fenian and other texts, with a spirited translation that did more 
to revive appreciation of classic Irish than Is generally realised. It 
Is not every man who can read English who can appreciate Shake- 
speare, and a knowledge of Irish does not imply an understanding 
of the subtle humour and delicate beauty of its literature. O'Grady 
had a liver appreciation of the nuances of Irish prose than any other 
of his day — he was himself able to write a richly humorous Irish 



676 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

style — and so his translations, witii their wondrous, reckless, imag- 
inative language reveal the richness of classic Irish with the power 
of brilliant criticism. 

O'Grady's influence was great on Mr. W. B. Yeats, Dr. Doug- 
las Hyde, Padraic Pearse, and others who have taken prominent 
parts in the Gaelic and Anglo-Irish literary movement of to-day. 
Dr. Douglas Hyde's "Literary History of Ireland" (1898) was 
the bible of the Gaelic League. It is a treasury of wonders. His 
pen, as it were a magic wand, transformed the Ireland of late 
Parnell days from being a sordid hovel to a regal palace in the 
eyes of the living Gael. He, Father Dineen, and others began to 
edit the classics of Irish letters and to compose a new literature 
in Gaelic. Dr. Hyde's playlets were the earliest fruits of the re- 
vival. Most of what was written in the new Irish was, however, 
of small literary value. Writers quite reasonably concentrated at- 
tention on developing a modern idiomatic style, and so a piece of 
good reporting from "the speech of the people," useful as a text 
for students, was more valued than a tale or poem of originality 
written in an indifferent or artificial style. Nine-tenths or more of 
the copious Gaelic publishing of the last 25 years has been of lin- 
guistic rather than literary value, and the attempt to produce a 
Gaelic drama has failed, save in translations from Anglo-Irish ar- 
tists, such as the Irish versions of W. B. Yeats's "Cathleen-ny- 
Houlihan, Seumas MacManus's "Lad from Largymore" and 
Corkery's "Clan Falvey." 

The search for a modern Gaelic style reached success in the 
epoch-making work of Canon Peter O'Leary (died 1920). An 
t-Athair Peadar, as we call him, wrote exactly as the good speakers 
of the old generation talked. He poured scorn — too much scorn, 
perhaps — on the "scholars" who fabricated a book-style. He 
broke away from the stately long sentences of classic Irish as 
Macaulay broke away from the Gibbonesque long English sentence, 
and like Macaulay, he coined a short-sentence style that is, above 
all else, lucid. His "Seadna," a folk-story told with much elabora- 
tion, descriptive of the life of the country side, is his great master- 
piece. It ranks as pure literature, and may be read in an English 
translation. His Irish translation of "The Imitation of Christ" 
goes out of print as fast as it can be printed. A dozen or so other 
books from his pen are modern renderings of classic Irish ro- 
mances, etc. 

Next to Canon O'Leary, Padraic O'Conaire is the most suc- 
cessful modern Irish writer. His novels and short tales in Irish 



THE MODERN LITERATURE OF IRELAND 677 

are the "best-sellers" printed in Ireland. He has not so rich a 
style as the master of modern Irish prose, but he is the most "mod- 
ern" of Irish or Anglo-Irish writers. A grim and gloomy realism, 
combined with a skill in story-telling not excelled by Maupassant, 
make him a writer whose works cannot be put down or ignored, 
even if they be distasteful to the reader. His influence is seen in 
Liam O'Rinn, the most promising of younger writers, who has writ- 
ten wonderfully realistic, if drab, tales of modern Dublin, and, hav- 
ing perfected a style based partly on the O'Leary tradition and 
partly on the classic literature that O'Leary neglected, has given 
us a standard work in translating Mickiewicz's "Book of the Polish 
Pilgrimage," a holy book of nationaUsm that has not yet appeared 
in English. 

"An Seabhac" and "Conan Maol" are two other writers of 
short tales whose w^ork cannot be overlooked. The former has 
written a volume of humorous stories that are classic records of 
country humour and models of a racy style. The latter is severely 
dignified in style and will live, though not winning great popularity. 

Padraic Pearse's Gaelic works are varied. His short tales, 
done in the colloquial manner, lack idiomatic finish, but have the 
strength of French short stories. They may be read in translation. 
They mark a departure in our literature by introducing the "ex- 
plosive opening" and other modernisms which were cried out 
against by Gaelic purists, but have been established by O'Conaire's 
highly modern art. Pearse stands almost alone in understanding — 
as O'Grady understood — the dignity of the artificial classic style, 
and he used this style very beautifully in some Gaelic political es- 
says which yet await appreciation. His poetry was classic in metre, 
but highly individual in matter. Old fashioned critics who objected 
to the individuality of Pearse's verse did not realise that he was 
harking back to the personal richness of the Golden Age. 

There are living other Irish writers who excel O'Leary, 
O'Conaire and Pearse in scholarship, in beauty of style, and per- 
haps in potentiality^ but they have yet to do their best work, and 
it would be invidious to attempt comparisons. In the Gaelic quar- 
terly, ^n Branar, their work may be seen. But the three names 
here quoted are names that stand for personalities, each strongly 
original and all dissimilar. Between the idyllic ruralism of 
O'Leary, the modernism of O'Conaire, the passion, the vision, the 
splendour of Pearse, there Is room for a very notable literature to 
grow up. There are many most encouraging signs of its early ap- 
pearance. 



678 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

II. The Literature of Anglo-Ireland 

Gaelic Ireland is the real Ireland, the secret Ireland. Only in 
the last twenty-five years has this been realised. Up to 1893 
(when the Gaelic League was founded) Irish-Ireland was con- 
temned, even by Irish patriots, and the pseudo-Ireland, the super- 
ficial, historically insignificant English-speaking Ireland, was ac- 
cepted as the true reality. Up to the date of the Great Famine, 
the bulk of the nation was Irish speaking. Even down till the end 
of the last century, English-writing authors in Ireland mostly came 
of a caste partly separated from the mass of the people. Only in 
our own days has Ireland been genuinely articulate in the English 
language, and the best of modern Anglo-Irish literature owes some- 
thing to English literature, while failing to express certain untrans- 
latable elements of Irish-Ireland thought and feeling. Still, 
Anglo-Irish literature is a not undistinguished body of work. It 
falls into two chief divisions. 

The first of these is the i8th century group. Molyneux was 
the first, famous for his "Case of Ireland," ordered to be burnt by 
the hangman because it contained such passages as this: "To tax 
me without my consent is little better than downright robbing me" 
and "There may be ill consequences if the Irish come to think of 
their rights and liberties left to depend on the will of a legislature 
wherein they are not parties." This spirited work played its part 
later in inspiring the American revolutionaries, but Molyneux' brave 
words in favour of liberty were intended to apply to the colonists 
only: the authentic nation, the Gaelic race, the Catholic popula- 
tion, he feared and detested as much as any of his political op- 
ponents. 

Similarly Bishop Berkeley, whose pamphlet. The Querist, is 
often quoted as Nationalist propaganda, exhibits in his political 
writings the same narrow colonial, or ascendancy, vision. The 
Querist is directed against the ill economy of the wasteful As- 
cendancy : 

Whether an Irish lady, set out with French silks and Flanders lace, 
may not be said to consuime more beef and butter than a hun- 
dred of our labouring peasants? 

Whether nine-tenths of our foreign trade be not carried on singly 
to support the article of vanity? 

Whether it is not madness for a poor nation to imitate a rich one? 

Whether a woman of fashion ought not to be declared a public enemy? 

Whether as seed equally scattered produccth a goodly harvest, even 
so an equal distribution of wealth doth not cause a nation to 
flourish ? 



THE MODERN LITERATURE OF IRELAND 679 

But when Berkeley goes on to ask whether Ireland could not 
support her population hi full comfort even were a brass wall built 
around the Island, he Is but the settler discussing the potentialities 
of captured land. He asks whether "the upper parts of this peo- 
ple" are not "English by blood, language, religion, manners, in- 
clination and Interest." The evils he inveighed against did not 
touch the Gaelic masses, for their trouble was not uneven distribu- 
tion of wealth, but political and economic annihilation. 

Berkeley's celebrated works on philosophy belong to another 
field than pure literature, but their English is esteemed as rank- 
ing with the finest In lucidity and eloquence. We may note that he 
Is often written of as being, in philosophy, as Irish as Locke was 
English and Hume Scottish. This is as just as it is plausible, for 
Berkeley's thought was on the Platonic side of that line which is 
said to divide all men into Platonists and Arlstoteleans; and from 
the Druids and Duns Scotus down, Irish speculators have been 
found on the Platonic side. 

Swift was the most notable of the colonial writers, and the near- 
est to a national figure, for his personality Is inseparable from the 
traditions of Dublin. He was an Englishman born and educated 
in Ireland, but hating his life In that country. Some instinct in 
his nature made him unusually sensitive to environment, for despite 
his English blood, he is a true Irish type of the line Shane O'Neill, 
Parnell, G. B. Shaw. The humbug-piercing cynicism, the cold- 
blooded satire, the love of overthrowing other people's idols that 
characterise that line of Irishmen were supremely represented in 
him. So mercilessly, so truthfully, did he satirise the feuds of 
sects, that he was suspected by the dense of Intending to ridicule 
all religion. When he solemnly proposed that Irish poverty be 
cured by using babies as food, he was quite in the Irish tradition of 
solemnly shocking criminal Indifference with the logical, if absurd, 
working out of Its principles. He was Irish, too, in his feminism. 
In the 1 8th century, a Turkish attitude to women prevailed, and 
It needed courage In a man of his creed and class, to declare that 
"the same virtues equally become both sexes." 

Goldsmith, who resembled Swift in wit and chivalry, was of a 
tenderer nature, and perhaps came nearer to expressing the Irish 
spirit In his writings, though they were not directly associated with 
Ireland. Like Swift, he came Into contact with Gaelic Ireland, for 
if Swift did an Irish poem (O'Rourke's feast) Into English and 
(perhaps) derived the plot of "Gulliver's Travels" from the Gaelic 
story "Eisirt," Goldsmith met Carolan In the flesh. Had Gold- 
smith been born in a cottier's hut, had he frequented the humble 



68o THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

bardic courts, he might have assumed Keating's mantle, and bent 
Irish prose to the range of modern thought. In "The Deserted 
Village" we feel we are touching Ireland. In 1740 (when Gold- 
smith was aged 12) Ireland was desolated by a famine that dis- 
peopled whole villages — 400,000 people perished. Hence the 
gloomy colours of the famous poem. The lament contains some 
sound Irish political economy, and the whole is a vignette of i8th 
century Ireland. 

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey 
Where wealth accumulates and men deca_v : 
Princes or lords may flourish or may fade, 
A breath could make them as a breath has made ; 
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride 
When once destroyed can ne\er be supplied. 

Goldsmith and Sheridan hold high places in English drama, 
ranking only below Shakespeare. Something more than a thread 
connects these i8th century Anglo-Irish dramatists with Wilde and 
Bernard Shaw, masters of social comedy in our own days. The 
satiric trait in the Irish temperament (strengthened by Irish his- 
tory!) finds congenial expression in the drama; verbal wit, flashing 
dialogue, colloquial prose, all vital elements of a dramatic st}'le, 
come easily to the Irish pen. The flexibility of style which marks 
Anglo-Irish prose writers, particularly the dramatists, is traceable to 
the animation of Irish conversation, which in turn is attributable to 
our bilingual conditions. The grammatic opulence of the Gaelic 
tongue makes Irish use of the English language lively and apt; and 
authors ignorant of Gaelic itself may reap benefit from the vitality 
of popular speech. To this day in Ireland an expressive, rhythmic 
English is spoken such as the English Elizabethans heard around 
them, though it died in England not long after their great days. 
Anglo-Irish prose offers the most imitative worthy models, the 
bright, easy, clear and forceful English of Berkeley, Goldsmith and 
Swift contrasting with the stilted and laborious prose of Johnson or 
Gibbon. 

The cause to which we attribute this flexibility of style is also 
accountable for Anglo-Irish writers' eminence in translation. Fran- 
cis' "Horace," Gary's "Dante," Mangan's renderings from Irish, 
German and Oriental tongues, Fitzgerald's "Omar" — these are but 
a few examples. 

Mention must not be omitted of Grattan's orations — ornate, 
eloquent, unsurpassable rhetoric. But a contemporary of the great 
parliamentarian calls for more particular notice — Wolfe Tone. 



THE MODERN LITERATURE OF IRELAND 68 1 

Tone's "Autobiogaphy" is one of the very greatest works of Anglo- 
Irish literature, little as it is appreciated by the critics. Padraic 
Pearse used to carry it about with him like a Gospel, and indeed, 
it is one of the gospels of Irish nationality. It reveals the most 
lovable personality who ever set pen to paper in Ireland. We 
cannot read it today without tears for his wistful memories of his 
runaway marriage on "one beautiful morning in June," thrills for 
his patriotic ideals, bitterness for his defeat, and heartfelt enthusi- 
asm for his heroic example. 

Thomas Moore was accused by Hazlitt of "turning the wild 
harp of Erin into a musical snuff-box" — a criticism worthy of a 
man with a satiric Irish strain. It corrects the idolisation of 
Moore which prevailed in the anglicised 19th century. But while 
we do right to remember that Moore's prettiness is not the majesty 
amd passion of the authentic Gael, yet he should be honoured be- 
cause, in however artificial a manner, he did keep alive a belief in 
"the days of old" 

. . . ere the emerald gem of the western world 
Was set in the crown of a stranger. 

He was of the prevailing "romantic" school : but romance was 
better than darkness, in the absence of certainty. 

The second division of Anglo-Irish literature comprises the 
writers of the "Nation," the men of '48 and their immediate suc- 
cessors. These energetic young men set out to create a national 
literature in English. They owed nothing to the i8th century 
school. Belonging to the Ascendancy class, they knew nothing of 
the Gael, save what was being introduced to the scholars' attention 
by O'Curry and O'Donovan. Their rousing national ballads were 
mostly composed on foreign models, and John Mitchel's mighty 
prose was marred by imitation of rhetorical Carlyle. The great- 
est by far was Thomas Davis. His was a mind of encyclopedic 
range, though not very deep learning. Ardently and persuadlngly 
he pleaded in his glowing essays for a national art, for reading- 
rooms, for historical studies, for industrial development. His 
poems have never been excelled as patriotic verse. "The West's 
Awake" will never lose popularity, but his songs of rural life, prais- 
ing sturdy country manners and simple joys, were equally part of 
his prophetic message to his people. His supreme teaching was — 
the return of Gaelicism. "Ireland free," he said, "yes, but at all 
hazards, Ireland Gaelic." Laughed at by the superficial, he 
preached revival of the Gaelic tongue, and set about its study him- 



682 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

self. He died with but three crov/ded years of work to his credit. 
The Famine came and struck down all the national energies. It 
was left to our own days for men to take up Davis's work, and his 
essays are the program of the Irish-Ireland movement to-day. 

Though Davis was greatest as a national teacher, Clarence 
Mangan was greatest as a literary artist. He differed from Davis, 
too, in being immersed in Gaelic style; his poetry is full of Gaelic 
imagery and music. He is to Irish what Chapman is to Homer. 
His Gaelicism renders him strange and difficult to English critics; 
otherwise he would be recognised as one of the greatest poets using 
English in his days. He was capable of magnificent symbolism as 
in this lament for the Irish princes : 

Theirs were not souls wherein dull Time 
Could domicile decay, or house Decrepitude, 

and of unforgettable passionate imagery, as in Dark Rosaleen, 
Meehal Dhu MacGiolla Keerin and C athleen-ny-H oulihan. 

Sir Samuel Ferguson must be mentioned with Mangan because, 
though his style was less racily Gaelic, and derived more from 
classical study, he aided in presenting Gaelic tradition through Eng- 
lish verse. He was more scholarly and more artistic than the po- 
litical writers of the Nation, but his patriotism was less from the 
heart. His poem describing The Burial of King Cormac — telling 
how the Boyne water carried away the corpse of the King who 
wished not to be buried with his pagan sires — gives us both the 
atmosphere of the Boyne country and a true picture of the splendid 
and barbaric pre-patrician age. His Lays of the JVestern Gael 
bring up a vivid pageant of the Red Branch figures. 

The reader who possesses Mitchel's Jail Journal (the second 
gospel of Irish nationality), the Spirit of the Nation (an anthology 
of the Nation poets), the Essays of Davis, and the poems of Man- 
gan and Ferguson, has a fairly complete collection of Anglo-Irish 
literature of this group. 

We have thus far made no allusion to fiction, for the reason 
that it is in poetry and the essay that Ireland found some degree 
of national expression, while fiction is a more external or impres- 
sionist matter. Maria Edgeworth's name is a great one in Eng- 
lish literature, and her brilliant tales of i8th century Ascendancy 
life in Ireland deserve attention, though they cannot be described 
as an expression of the nation. Carleton's tales contain a rich gal- 
lery of pictures of the people's life in the early 19th century, but 
their anti-Irish bias renders them displeasing to modern readers. 



THE MODERN LITERATURE OF IRELAND 683 

Love and Lever wrote rollicking tales which are similarly disap- 
proved of because they distorted Irish life to please the prejudices 
of a contemptuous English mai^et. The judicious reader, of 
course, can peruse these works with interest and profit, but they 
are intrinsically unnational. Kickham's Ktiocknagow is the one out- 
standing Irish novel of the age that is national, inoffensive and 
historic. 



CHAPTER LXXVIII 

SINN FEIN 

The world is witnessing in Ireland an extraordinary national renais- 
sance, which expresses itself in literature, art, industry, social ideal- 
ism, religious fervour and personal self-sacrifice. Deprived of the 
means of learning, impoverished and ground down, the Irish people 
for 200 years have not known culture or freedom, and their history 
for that period is gloomy reading. 

The country in these long years lay fallow, but the soil was 
good. In the closing years of the 19th century the untilled field was 
ploughed up and sown in by the Gaelic League. From this educa- 
tional movement which began in 1893 the whole revival of Irish- 
Ireland may be datcd.^ 

Recovering some measure of strength at last after the exhaus- 
tion of the famine years, but disheartened and confused by the col- 
lapse of the Parnell movement, Ireland welcomed the Gaelic League 

1 At the very beginninir of the Gaelic League movement a Gaelic song, sung 
from the gallery of a Dublin theatre by William Rooney and some fellow en- 
thusiasts (the first of its kind ever heard in such place) had thrilling effect upon 
many of the hearers — especially upon Ethna Carbery who commemorated the 
event in her poem : 

A GAELIC SONG 

A murmurous tangle of voices, 

Laughter to left and right, 
We waited the curtain's rising. 

In a glare of electric light; 
When down through the din came, slowly. 

Softly, then clear and strong, 
The mournful minor cadence 

Of a sweet old Gaelic song. 

Like the trill of a lark new-risen. 

It trembled upon the air. 
And wondering eyes were lifted 

To seek for the singer there ; 
Some dreamed of the thrush at noontide. 

Some fancied a linnet's wail, 
While the notes went sobbing, sighing, 

O'er the heartstrings of the Gael. 

The lights grew blurred, and a vision 

Fell upon all who heard — 
The purple of moorland heather 

By a wonderful wind was stirred ; 
684 



SINN FEIN 685 

as a new and hopeful means of exerting her national energies. The 
League spread like fire. With its pageants, its countryside "feise- 
anna" or festivals, its Gaehc song and music, rich with memories, 
its lectures on the forgotten glories of the Gael, it roused the whole 
mind of the country. Thainig anam in Eirinn — a soul came into 
Ireland. The popular imagination recovered a vision of historic 
Ireland, that traditional nation whose heroes were not the orators 
of College Green but the O'Neills and the Fianna and the chivalry 
of the Red Branch. Twenty-five years ago, the multitude were 
stark ignorant of the names of Conall Cearnach, Luke Wadding, 
Celtinn, Raftery: to-day the traditional lore is at least as fam- 
iliar as the English lore which had threatened utterly to usurp it. 
To-day, too, Gaelic education has its numerous summer colleges 
and diocesan colleges; it has assumed something like Its proper na- 
tional position In all the better seminaries, and no scholar can enter 
the National University without a knowledge of the Irish tongue. 

The centre of gravity in national life changed from the angli- 
cised towns to the rural population, sturdy, unspoilt, patriotic, virile, 
the offspring and living representatives of the traditional Gael. 
Hence Irish politics began forthwith to reflect the mind of the real 
Irish race. 

Green rings of rushes went swaying-, 

Gaunt boughs of Winter made moan ; 
One saw the glonr of Life go by, 

And one saw Death alone. 

A river twined through its shallows, 

Cool waves crept up on a strand, 
Or fierce, like a mighty army, 

Swept wide on a conquered land ; 
The Dead left cairn and barrow. 

And passed in noble train. 
With sheltering shield, and slender spear — 

Ere the curtain rose again. 

The four great seas of Eire 

Heaved under fierce ships of war, 
The God of Battles befriended. 

We saw the Star! the Star! 
We nerved us for deeds of daring, 

For Right we stood against Wrong; 
We heard the prayer of our mothers, 

In that sweet old Gaelic song. 

It was the souJ of Eire 

Awaking in speech she knew. 
When the clans held the glens and the mountains, 

And the hearts of her chiefs were true: 
She hath stirred at last in her sleeping, 

She is folding her dreams away. 
The hour of her destiny neareth — 

And it may be to-day — to-day! 



686 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

We now see Ireland, in the new century new-awakened to self- 
consciousness, a stout rural nation, filled with new pride in its past, 
and feeling after means to achieve a worthy future. Throughout 
the country, a band of enthusiasts toils at an intellectual movement 
— studies a difiicult and educative language, reads history and all 
manner of books on national construction, and acts as a ferment to 
the whole people. 

Extraordinary little newspapers and magazines, written volun- 
tarily by enthusiasts, began to appear. The most important was the 
United Irishman,'^ edited by Mr. Arthur Griffith (the Hamlet of 
the whole story) and contributed to by scores of brilliant writers 
of verse, drama, tale, essay and research-work. This weekly, vol- 
untary, paper, published work that has since taken rank among the 
immortal things of Irish literature. Parallel to this journalistic 
movement, a dramatic movement, led by W. B. Yeats and Lady 
Gregory, was proceeding in the Abbey Theatre. 

This intellectual ferment called for a political expression. You 
could not have all young Ireland brimful with enthusiasm for the 
glories of the Gael, primed with ambition to see again on Irish 
soil a hale and lovely polity like that of old, eager to use hand 
and brain in patriot work, and yet rest content to mark time behind 
a (Parliamentary) political movement that seemed to have lost 
momentum, and which certainly gave no promise that it was seek- 
ing an Ireland such as was now envisioned. 

In 1905 Mr. Griffith and his friends put before the nation a 
new political movement. In Dublin on Nov. 28, 1905, a National 
CounciP was called into being for the purpose of organising the 
nation with a view to withdrawing the representatives sitting at 
Westminster and setting up a provisional Irish Parliament made up 
of these members and representatives of public bodies. This de 
facto Parliament would call upon the people to co-operate with it 
voluntarily in the administration of Ireland. In a newly-founded 
weekly, Sinn Fein (succeeding the United Irishman)^ Mr. Griffith 
proceeded to show how the nation could thus conduct its own affairs 
even while the national parliament was denied recognition by out- 
side powers. 

Thus, through the Harbour Boards, difficulties could be Im- 
posed in the "dumping" of foreign goods, which would amount to 



2 Preceded by the Slian Van Voclif, which, edited by Ethna Carbery and 
Alice Milligan, first awaked the new national enthusiasm, and did splendid pioneer 
work. 

3 For sake of historical record it may be stated that those who first met and 
formed this National Council were: Arthur Griffith, Maud Gonne MacBride, 
Alderman Tom Kelly, Henry Dixon, Seumas MacManus, and Edward Martyn. 



SINN FEIN 687 

a system of protection for Irish industries. The public could be 
organised for the support of native industry, and capital could be 
encouraged by the offer of rate-free sites, etc. Arbitration Courts 
could be set up everywhere, superseding the British courts in civil 
matters. National insurance could be undertaken. National banks 
could divert from foreign fields the Irish money which could so 
much more profitably be invested in buying up Irish land, financing 
Irish developments and extending Irish control of home resources. 
A national mercantile marine could be co-operatively bought and 
set to carrying Irish produce to those Continental markets which 
offered so much better prices than the Enghsh markets to which 
English ships carried Irish cattle and manufactured goods. Irish 
commercial agents — consuls — could be sent to the great foreign 
trade centres.* 

It was this policy of boycotting foreign institutions, and of 
"non-co-operation" with the usurping power, which, under Deak's 
leadership, won Hungary the status of an independent nation in 
the struggle with Austria that culminated in 1867. Griffith's per- 
sonality is in ways reminiscent of Deak's. In Hungarian history 
you will read that Deak was above all other things, inflexible. He 
was not an "extremist," but he was trusted by those who went far- 
ther than he did because they knew that he would never be betrayed 
into standing for a party instead of for a nation. He would do 
nothing to help Austria govern Hungary. He preached the pure 
doctrine of nationality. The blandishments of the Emperor, paper 
promises of a constitution, the actual setting-up of a subordinate 
Home-Rule parliament; all failed to extort one sign of recognition 
from this iron leader. When even all his demands were promised 
him if he would promise in return Hungarian military aid, he re- 
fused to be moved. Freedom was a right, not a thing to be bar- 
gained for. Only when the free Hungarian constitution was brought 
into being did he extend the hand of friendship. 

That has been Arthur Griffith's attitude, and the fact that his 
policy has made such remarkable progress is due to his iron refusal 

* This policy was not wholly a novel one. Daniel O'Connell once contem- 
plated summoning a Council of Three Hundred, withdrawing representation at 
Westminster, and proceeding to legislate for the country. The idea had been en- 
thusiastically taken up by the Young Irelanders, but when O'Connell found he had 
a militant and united nation behind him, he abandoned the scheme. That it had 
frightened the British supremacy is clear from Lord John Russell's dictum: "In 
six months the power and function of government will be wrested from our 
hands, and the Lord Lieutenant will sit powerless in Dublin Castle." The Arbitra- 
tion Courts which had been prepared with a view to superseding the English 
courts, were surrendered as well as the Council, and Ireland heard no more of 
the proposal until it was brought to mind by Griffith. 



688 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

to compromise on any point, or to parley, until liberty is brought 
into being. A pen-portrait thus describes him: . . . "A small 
man, very sturdily built, nothing remarkable about his appearance 
except his eyes, which are impenetrable and steely; taciturn, deliber- 
ate, speaking when he does speak with the authority and finality oi 
genius, totally without rhetoric, under complete self-control, and 
the coolest and best brain in Ireland." And: "He believes in- 
tensely in himself, and he has no real faith in anybody else, so that 
he is always more or less cold towards anybody who tries to do any 
political work in or about his own particular sphere. . . . Once 
he has made up his mind on anything he never changes. In con- 
troversy he is like a bull-dog: he is always the last to let go, and 
by that time there isn't much left of the other man's case. As a 
controversialist he is able and . . . unscrupulous,^ but he is nearly 
always right." The same writer adds that "he is naturally a be- 
liever in evolutionary methods in politics rather than in revolu- 
tionary methods, and. In a free Ireland, would I think be found on 
the side of what The Times would call 'stability.' He is no great 
believer in the rights of man, and modern radical catch-cries leave 
him cold; his creed being rather the rights of nations and the du- 
ties of man, the rights of a nation being freedom and the allegiance 
and service of all its children, and the rights of man being to fear 
God and serve his nation. He believes in the State as against the 
individual." 

We give this extended account of Arthur Griffith, because it 
may justly be said that his personality is the Sinn Fein movement. 
Though he alone could not have made Sinn Fein the power in Ire- 
land that it is, yet those brilliant minds, those fighters and doers, 
who brought his movement to its present position, would without 
him have been disunited and perhaps conflicting forces. In particu- 
lar, the Volunteer movement, had it stood as a Physical Force 
movement alone, would have resulted in a disastrous and disheart- 
ening failure such as took the heart out of former generations in 
Ireland. When Easter Week was over, and the insurgents were 
crushed, the country was not broken as after '98 or '48 or '67, be- 
cause the large fabric of the comprehensive Sinn Fein policy re- 
mained, and the sacrifice of Pearse and his comrades served but as 
a stimulus to the masses to carry on the work of industrial revival, 
language-restoration, etc. 

Griffith, in his long years of propaganda, had taught the rising 

5 It is just to say, here, that the writer of this foot-note, lonj? intimate with 
Griffith's work, can recall nothing to justify this surprising charge. — S. M. M. 



SINN FEIN 689 

generation that nationality was to be served in every act of life. 
The pages of Sinn Fein teemed with ideas, represented every phase 
of national existence. Art, literature, the drama, economics, in- 
dustry, sociology; all such topics were discussed by enthusiasts, and 
plans were even laid for a national decimal coinage of which the 
unit was to be the Gael (equivalent to the Franc). When in 1910 
Mr. Redmond secured the Balance of Power in the British Parlia- 
ment, Mr. Griffith suspended the organising of Sinn Fein as a po- 
litical party, giving the Parliamentary leader a free hand to achieve 
whatever he could achieve for Ireland with the parliamentary 
weapon. For years, then, Sinn Fein v/as apparently dormant, its 
only large activity being the publication of the weekly with its con- 
structive and critical articles. Mr. Griffith believed that the parlia- 
mentary dice was weighted against Ireland, and that at the critical 
moment, the rival British parties would coalesce, rather than be 
played off against each other to yield Irish freedom. So he bided 
his time. It may here be remarked that one man could have wielded 
the weapon of Abstention with force at that time. Mr. Redmond 
had the leadership of the nation and could have secured its approval 
of a dramatic leaving of the House of Commons when the Liberals 
played Ireland false. It is a tragedy that (for whatever cause) 
he was not able to co-operate with Arthur Griffith in this way. 
Much blood and sorrow might have been spared. 

Unhappily Redmond allowed himself to be coerced by the 
threats of Sir Edward Carson, and early in 19 14, accepted the prin- 
ciple of Partition. Weakness, and perhaps anglicisation led him 
to almost abject surrender, and ever since, English politicians have 
used the authority of an Irish leader for a policy of dividing the 
Irish nation. In Ireland, there was horror and almost despair. 
Meanwhile, Nationalists had organised a Volunteer force number- 
ing up to 200,000 to repel the threat of Sir Edward Carson's 
Volunteers, who were armed with the connivance of English mili- 
tary authorities and at the expense of English Unionists. There 
was even talk of Civil War on the eve of the Great War: but this 
must be largely discounted as journalistic sensationalism, since the 
Ulster Volunteer, who would not even subscribe for his own equip- 
ment, not parade without the free gift of a bowler-hat, was not 
likely to play the hero In the field against men fighting for a real 
cause. Indeed, when the Great War came, only one in ten of these 
loyal warriors enlisted for the defence of the Empire which they 
professed to love so dearly. 

But the Great War found the Irish situation under the influence 
of another element than Unionism, Parllamentarianism and Sinn 



690 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Fein — an element which we have not yet referred to, to wit, Fc- 
nianisni, or Republicanism. A Physical Force party, aiming at an 
independent Irish Republic, owned a monthly paper, Irish Freedom, 
and through a series of "Wolfe Tone Clubs," exerted an influence 
on public opinion that was far from being negligible. This party 
enjoyed the allegiance of several of the best brains of modern Ire- 
land: in particular, it numbered among its leading adherents, Pa- 
draic Pearse, one of the most remarkable men of his age. 

Parnell had said that Fenianism was the backbone of the na- 
tion. Though not a Physical Force man himself, he did nothing to 
check the activities of those who believed in freeing Ireland by 
armed conflict: he refused to be "England's policeman." And so 
his own movement was the stronger because his opponents knew 
that if it were withdrawn they would have to deal with the desperate 
men who stood behind. Even so, Grattan once had used the men- 
ace of the Volunteers of 1782. But Fenianism appeared to the 
outer world to have perished in our own days. A few old Fenians 
here and there, "embers" kept the fire of freedom aflame in the 
country, and some, like the venerable John O'Leary, preached that 
Physical Force was needed, not because it was capable of winning 
against England, but because sacrifice alone would keep Nationality 
alive. 

How far Fenianism survived as an organisation only the ini- 
tiates could tell; but it is a known fact that Fenianism definitely 
took up arms again some years before the war. 

The Fenians adopted from Fintan Lalor the motto: "Repeal 
not the Union, but the Conquest." These were lean years for Sinn 
Fein, but these two small parties of enthusiasts worked side by side 
without acrimony. Each was equally devoted to the full Irish-Ire- 
land program of a Gaelicised nation. The Fenians were the active 
element in the Volunteers when that extraordinary armed move- 
ment came into being: but they did not at first control the new de- 
velopment. 

Such, then, were the factors in the Irish situation on which the 
Great W^ar descended in August, 19 14. 



CHAPTER LXXIX 

EASTER RISING 

'Tis said that the first shots in the Great War were fired in Ireland. 
This happened on July 26th, 19 14, a beautiful summer Sunday. It 
came about thus : 

Early in 19 14 the Carsonite Volunteers, with the connivance of 
British sympathisers in high places, ran a big cargo of arms ashore 
at Larne, and distributed them over Ulster by motors flying through 
the night. The exploit was carried out with excellent generalship, 
and one life, that of an over-excited official, was lost. Those were 
dull days in world affairs — the calm before the storm — and the 
press received the news with voracious joy. Every newspaper pub- 
lished thrilling (often imaginative) accounts, garnished with maps 
and war-artists' pictures. The public enjoyed a sensation bigger 
than anything since the Boer War. Forthwith, the British Gov- 
ernment prohibited the importation of arms into Ireland, lest the 
Nationalists should secure weapons too. 

On Sunday, July 19th, the Dublin Volunteers were mobilised 
for a route march. A big column assembled at the Volunteer 
grounds at Clontarf after Mass, and received orders to march 
towards Howth. Only one or two officers knew what the day's 
program was, and the section commanders and rank and file obe- 
diently tramped out along the side of Dublin Bay, turning off to the 
left, according to orders, where a bye-road leads to Baldoyle, a 
little village near a racecourse. The Volunteers were, as usual, 
watched by police. This being the first big muster of Volunteers, 
perhaps a suspicion passed through the minds of both the Volun- 
teers and the police, that some coup was being planned. However, 
arrived at Baldoyle, the column was dismissed and allowed to take 
refreshments. After an hour or so, the whistles sounded, and the 
men were marched back to Dublin. Nothing remarkable had hap- 
pened. There was talk that at the next route march there would 
probably be some drill in field operations. . . . 

On the following Sunday, the volunteers were again mobilised. 
Nearlv a thousand paraded. As they hurried from all parts of 

691 



692 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

Dublin to the parade ground, they saw announcements on the 
Sunday paper placards of a serious international crisis that had been 
brought about through Austria's quarrel with Serbia. The very 
sensitive minds felt, perhaps, the first tremors of the coming 
cataclysm. 

Out towards Howth they marched once more, singing their 
marchings songs, "Clare's Dragoons," "Step Together," and the 
"Soldiers' Song." Only a few knew the words of this last and 
none guessed that in less than three years it would be as popular 
with the Irish race as "God Save Ireland." Out the Howth Road 
they swung along and past Kilbarrack churchyard; but instead of 
turning to the left for Baldoyle, they were led past Sutton on 
towards the great hill of Howth itself. 

When the column reached the narrow isthmus which links 
Howth to the mainland, the island of Ireland's Eye could be seen to 
the left across the sunny green waters. Past it, making for Howth 
Harbour, a small yacht was sailing. None of the Volunteers, save 
perhaps three men, knew what that yacht was carrying in her hold. 
When the Volunteers reached the foot of Howth pier, they were 
halted. The yacht was then nearing the mouth of the harbour. 
Suddenly, as the white sails dropped and the little craft ran under 
the lighthouse, and around the pierhead, the order was passed along 
the line to double down the pier. Vaguely sensing that something 
notable was afoot, the Volunteers ran. Small contingents of picked 
men appeared from no one knew where and guarded the foot of 
the pier with automatic pistols. Coast guards venturing to interfere 
found themselves looking into the muzzles of lethal weapons and 
desisted. Police, going to barracks to telephone to Dublin discov- 
ered that wires had been cut and that Howth was isolated. And 
then — 

The column had been halted along the pier. The little yacht 
was moored at the pierhead. Hea\-y batons of wood with leather 
wrist-straps were dealt out and a hundred or so Volunteers were 
armed therewith. Suddenly it was noticed that in the summer sun- 
li'ght straw-bound objects were being handed up from the boat to 
those Volunteers who held the pierhead. Straining eyes saw the 
straw torn away, and the Irish Volunteers' first rifles appearing! 

An indescribable shriek of cheers went up. The column broke, 
and men dashed forward, eager to get arms. For a few minutes 
the officers had difficulty in restoring order. "Have patience," they 
said. "Don't fear — there's enough to go 'round." 

And so, in a few minutes, every Volunteer held a heavy rifle 



EASTER RISING 693 

in his hands, while motors shot away with further stands and boxes 
of ammunition. 

Loudly were the armed men cheered by holiday makers at 
Howth, people on tramtops and by roadside, as they marched 
back to the city, their rifles on their shoulders. Word of their 
approach was carried ahead of them, by, it may be assumed, a 
police motor. Bodies of police marched behind them, and when, 
after 9 miles' tramping, they neared Clontarf, the Volunteer cycle 
scouts rode back to the column with word that a detachment of 
British soldiers blocked the way into the city. The marching 
column drew up a few score feet from the sinister khaki line. Their 
officers received from a police official the intimation that they must 
surrender their arms. The officers temporised. The police official, 
on some technical point, was acting beyond his powers, though in 
the spirit of his authorities. The discussion between the two parties 
was accordingly prolonged. While the argument over technicalities 
lasted the Volunteers quietly dispersed and got away across fields 
to safe hiding places for their guns. And so battle was avoided. 
Yet it was touch-and-go, and had ammunition been served out 
instead of prudently held back by the Volunteer leaders, there 
would undoubtedly have ensued a bloody episode with huge casu- 
alties.^ 

But though the armed men thus got their weapons away without 
a clash of arms, the day was not to end in peace. The khaki forces 
marching back to barracks were hooted by a mob that resented an 
attempt to disarm Nationalists while Carsonites were encouraged 
to arm. The soldiers fired two volleys into the crowd. Four 
people were in cold blood shot dead and about fifty wounded. 

This tragic occurrence shocked the whole country. Mr. 
Asquith's efforts to gloze over the shooting of civilians infuriated 
the insulted nation. The victims' funeral was one of the most 
impressive events ever witnessed in Dublin. Hundreds of thou- 
sands participated. Volunteers kept order and fired a military 
salute over the graves. There was a breath of revolution in the air. 

And then the Great War began. Everyone felt that those shots 

^ One body of worthy ones, wlio materially aided in the saving of the guns — 
as well as in other good projects — was the fine, and well-trained body of patriotic 
Irish lads, the Fianna na hEireann. They were a body of brave boys enrolled by 
a brave Irishwoman, who fought gallantly, and suffered sorely for Ireland, the 
Countess Markievicz. The admirable Con Colbert, who smilingly met the martyr 
death dealt to the patriot leaders of the Easter Rising, was one of the Fian — and 
had become a chief trainer of them. He had an able assistant in another lovable 
Fian graduate, and rebel leader, Liam Mellowes. 



694 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

at civilians in Dublin had been the first blows in the conflict. Appealo 
were now made to Irishmen to rally to the defence of England I 
Mr. Asquith, visiting Dublin to address a great ticket meeting, had 
to approach the hall through armed guards, and the demonstration 
secured, it is said, only six recruits. - 

When Mr. Redmond, who had promised unreserved Irish aid 
in the war without even stipulating that national freedom should 
first be ensured, went farther, and declared that the Irish Volunteers' 
duty was to enlist en masse under England's flag, the founders of 
the Volunteer organisation revolted, and the movement was split. 
The original Volunteers were a minority, but they were a deter- 
mined body of men, and as Irish nationality received one rebuff 
after another, and coercion was used against Irishmen of inde- 
pendent standing, an increasing body of discontented or disillusioned 
people passed over to the "extreme" camp. In 19 14 the majority 
was with Mr. Redmond. By the beginning of 19 16 his Volunteers 
had melted away and he was a lonely, disappointed, failing man. On 
St. Patriclc's Day of that year, a wonderful demonstration took 
place, a vast body of Volunteers parading in College Green before 
the old Parliament House, and saluting Eoin MacNeill, recognised 
leader of the recalcitrants. It was then clear that the Volunteer 
movement was definitely in the opposite camp to Mr. Redmond, 
and was both powerful and determined. Nobody doubted nov.' 
that an armed conflict between this well-organised body and the 
forces of the Crown was something more than a lively possibility. 

Professor MacNeill, however, was known to be a cautious and 
moderate man, who then followed a policy far short of the republi- 
can. He was in favour of accepting and defending Elome Rule. He 
wished to see the Volunteers' organisation brought to a pitch of 
completeness that would enable the leaders, at the war's end, to 
confront England with an armed nation demanding its promised 
freedom. He was not in favour of striking for a republic to be 
achieved by force of arms, though It Is, of course, impossible to say 
whether he would not have agreed to an insurrection had Germany 
been able to send forces and arms that would render such action 
seriously formidable to British power. 

How came it, then, that insurrection without German aid ulti- 
mately came about? The answer Is found in the personality of two 
men — Padraic Pearse and James Connolly. 

Without doubt, Pearse was one of the most remarkable men 

2 The meeting was attended by Mr. Redmond's faithful "loyah"sts" and the 
Anglo-Irish. Admission by ticket was arranged, to prevent the real Irish from 
smashing it up. 



EASTER RISING 695 

ever born in Ireland. lils curious and powerful writings expound 
a philosophy that sets the Irish cause in the light of a tremendous 
religious mission. As an educationalist alone, Pearse came with a 
message destined to work, profound revolution in the nation's 
intellectual life. Starting, as it were, where the Gaelic League 
left off, to wit: at the conviction that Irish must be restored to the 
position it enjoyed in Gaelic days if the nation is to preserve its 
apostolicity, he went farther, and showed that the whole system of 
education in Ireland, and the intellectual standards of the educated, 
must be utterly changed. He advocated bilingualism on the ground 
that it made for rich intellectual development, and having studied 
bilingual education in Belgium, he expounded it in the press and in 
practice. Irish was made the school language at St. Enda's, his 
school, only the sciences in which a Gaelic vocabulary is lacking 
being taught in English. But his educational ideals went far farther 
than bilingualism. He held that *heroic literature, the national 
sagas, should take a prime place in school curricula. At St. Enda's 
every boy was made as familiar with Cuchulainn and Fionn as in 
other schools he would be with Macaulay. Heroic pageants and 
Passion Plays were enacted while lectures from eminent literati 
introduced the lads to realms of modern culture. Further, the 
common relation of master and pupil was changed for that of 
teacher and disciple. Pearse held that Our Lord, moving with the 
Twelve about the countryside and feeding them on the richness of 
His wisdom, was the ideal type towards which education should 
aspire. 

Pearse held that English commercialism was the wickedest 
thing that ever corrupted the hearts of great nations. Irish nation- 
ality, on the other hand, he saw as a sacred trust, committed to 
the race by God, who spoke through Tone and Mitchel and Davis 
and Labor as the Four Evangelists of Ireland, and was crucified in 
Robert Emmet, who made the supreme sacrifice to keep the spirit 
of the nation alive. Every generation, Pearse said, must make 
protest in blood against foreign dommion; otherwise Ireland's claim 
to independent nationhood would be annulled. He quoted the in- 
spired utterance that "without blood there is no remission of sins," 
and both in his school and in his writings preached ceaselessly the 
beauty of sacrifice. In one of his most typical school plays, a saintly 
youth takes the place of the king at the head of a failing army, and 
by the gift of his young life wins a victory. "Let me do this little 
thing, O King," says the boy as he goes forth to death. That was 
Pearse's most typical and most actually personal line. 

When the war came, Pearse brooded even more seriously on 



696 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

the need of an armed rising. When every other subject people 
rose for freedom, was Ireland alone to make no sign? She must 
fight, if not with hope of success, then in the spirit of a blood 
sacrifice to demonstrate her undying resolve to win ultimate free- 
dom. This Pearse preached to the people, speaking at meetings 
where, with a religious solemnity, he made his hearers stand as for 
the recitation of the Creed in Church, and repeat after him: "I 
believe in One Irish Nation, and that Free." 

And yet Pearse was slow to consent to the Rising. Undoubtedly 
he expected and relied on an armed conflict in Ireland before the 
Great War should end, but he was resolved to strike when the blow 
should have best chance of success. It is generally believed, and is 
probably the case, that James Connolly was responsible for the 
hurrying of things to an issue. 

Connolly was a Socialist, and the Socialist Republican Party 
which he founded before the '98 Centenary was an active force in 
the revival of separation. He believed in the Marxian doctrine of 
Social Revolution with more earnestness than the Socialists of 
other countries, who professed to be revolutionaries, but feared 
revolution no less than other classes of the community. Connolly 
worked at all times to bring about that violent revolt against the 
Capitalist system from which the new order was expected to rise. 
Pearse, no less than Connolly, was opposed to the Capitalist order 
and looked to see new Ireland blossom as a co-operative common- 
wealth; but he did not share Connolly's reliance on Class War: 
he hoped to see patriotism, by inspiring all classes with a 
lofty ideal, direct the nation to a nobler order than the present. 
Connolly, however, was no doctrinaire Socialist: he was not pledged 
to a communistic future, and would have supported any program 
which made for democracy in industry and equitable d'stribution of 
wealth and power. He was as intensely patriotic as any anti- 
socialist, and when awaiting execution said to his daughter : "Other 
socialists will not understand why I am here — they forget that I 
am an Irishman." 

Connolly is «aid to have told his friends in 19 14 that he would 
not let the war end without striking a blow for revolution. In the 
early part of 19 16, his paper preached revolt in unmistakable terms. 
Undoubtedly his propaganda hastened the ultimate decision. 
During the Lent preceding the Rising he published such fiercely 
rebellious matter that no reader could doubt his intention. It was 
expected that the Castle would raid Libertv Hall and destrov the 
revolutionary printing press. So, to defend liberty of utterance, a 
Citizen Army guard stood with loaded rifles, day and night, pre- 



EASTER RISING 697 

pared to resist to the end. Just a week before Easter, the Irish 
Tricolour was hoisted over the Hall as if the Republic were already 
in being. The atmosphere was tense. Various raids, captures of 
arms, strange threats and rumours, filled the public mind with the 
impression that something sensational was afoot. It was thought 
that an attempt might soon be made to disarm the Volunteers, and 
people vaguely wondered what resistance could be offered. 

On Easter Sunday two mysterious items in the papers sent a 
thrill of sensation through the country. The first was a report of 
how a motor carrying unknown persons, driving furiously in the 
dark towards the Kerry coast, had taken a wrong turn and plunged 
into an arm of the sea. The second was this note, signed by Eoin 
MacNeill, chairman of the Volunteers: 

"Owing to the very critical position, all orders given to Irish 
Volunteers for to-morroAv, Easter Sunday, are hereby rescinded, 
and no parades, marches, or other movements of Irish Volunteers 
will take place. Each individual Volunteer will obey this order 
strictly in every particular." 

It needed little imagination to guess that the motor car accident 
had been in connection with some landing of arms or persons, and 
Professor MacNeill's order clearly showed that some stupendous 
crisis had just been passed. 

What had happened was, that Roger Casement had landed in 
Kerry, had failed to be met by those who were to take him to his 
destination, and had been captured by police, identified, and hurried 
away, a prisoner, to London. Simultaneously, a liner, now named 
the Aud, which accompanied Casement's submarine, disguised as a 
Norwegian timber ship, but really carrying 20,000 rifles, millions 
of rounds of ammunition, with machine guns and explosives, had 
been stopped by a British patrol boat near Tralee, where the arms 
were to be landed. Flying the German flag, the Aud was scuttled 
by its own crew. 

A Rising had been planned for Easter Sunday. The news of 
Casement's arrest and the loss of the cargo of arms had reached 
the Volunteer headquarters, and it is believed that Casement at the 
last moment got an appeal through to abandon the project. It is not 
known whether the Volunteer council as a whole had decided 
on insurrection, or whether it was the secret intention of the 
Fenian section only. But in any case, the proposal was 
negatived and Eoin MacNeill sent the Countermanding Order 
broadcast through the land. The manoeuvres arranged for 
Easter Sunday — which from drill were to have been transformed 



698 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

into action — were abandoned, and the Insurrection appeared to be 
definitely and finally "off." 

But on Easter Monday, soon after noon, the Irish Republic was 
proclaimed in Dublin, and the insurgent Tricolour suddenly broke 
on startled eyes from the flagstaff above the General Post Office in 
the heart of the Irish capital. 

What caused the change of plan? This. — ^The British govern- 
ment learnt from the sinking of the Aud how nearly insurrection 
had come to pass, and the decision was made to seize the Volunteer 
executive and break up the organisation. No sooner was the 
decision made than it was communicated to the threatened parties 
by their Secret Service. On Easter Sunday the Voluntc^er council 
sat to consider a situation which was in substance this : a simul- 
taneous rising throughout the country had been rendered imprac- 
ticable by the Countermanding Order. But if no blow was struck 
there and then, the possibility of striking a blow at any time would 
be lost, for the Castle was to arrest all the leaders during the 
coming week. Should they submit to disarmament thus, or should 
they strike in Dublin with whatever sporadic support might be 
rendered through the country? 

It is said that the decision to strike was reached by only a 
majority of one. Eoin MacNeill and those who felt with him con- 
sistently opposed unaided insurrection. Sean MacDiarmada, Tom 
Clarke and Thomas MacDonagh were, on the other hand, com- 
mitted to the insurgent policy. Pearse is believed to have favoured 
the moderate counsel, but Connolly declared that the Citizen Army 
at any cost would strike before it was disarmed, and so, having 
preached at all times the duty of Irishmen to vindicate their national 
faith by sacrifice, Pearse gave the vote for insurrection which turned 
the course of Irish history. 

It seemed a forlorn hope. Did the insurgents think to win on 
the field of battle? When all was over, people gasped at the 
apparent madness of a few ill-armed youths in throwing down the 
gage to an empire. But a week before, the Rising was by no means 
an extravagant proposal. Had the Aud safely landed its cargo, to 
be followed by further consignments at some point on the coast 
held by the now-equipped insurgents, then a certain belt or area 
of the country could have been captured, entrenched, and held for 
an indefinite period. Some 100,000 men could have been secured 
for the fighting line. To crush an insurrection of such magnitude 
— supported perhaps by German air and naval raids on the English 
coast and by the establishment of Ge'-man submarine bases In ports 
seized by the rebels — England would have needed practically to 



EASTER RISING 699 

withdraw her forces on the Western Front. It is not too much 
to say that the issue of the war in the West might have been wholly 
changed had a well-armed, all-Ireland insurrection taken place. 

The Easter Monday Rising, however, had no such military 
prospects of success. There was always, of course, the chance that 
a German success on the Western Front would break England's 
defences and allow substantial help to be sent before the Rising was 
crushed, but this proved a vain hope. A small ineffectual shelling 
of the English coast was all that Germany performed in Ireland's 
aid. The Insurgents put little reliance on German succour : they 
went out fully prepared to meet defeat and death, believing the 
Rising to be an honourable necessity, and hoping that it would 
ultimately prove successful by rousing the spirit of the nation and 
making the Irish cause once more an international question. 

On the morning of Easter Monda)^ April 24th, 19 16, the 
Dublin battalions paraded, bearing full arms and one day's rations. 
Shortly after noon, the General Post Office, the Four Courts, three 
of the railway termini, and other important points circling the 
centre of Dublin, were rushed and occupied. The Proclamation of 
the Irish Republic was published in big placards : 

Poblacht na liEireann 

The Provisional Government of the Irish Republic 

To the People of Ireland: 

Irishmen and Irishzvomenf In the name of God and of 
the dead generations from which she receives the old tradition 
of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to 
her flag, and strikes for her freedom. . . . 

PFe declare the right of the people of Ireland to the 
ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish 
destinies, to he sovereign and indefeasible. . . . In every 
generation the Irish people have asserted their right to 
National freedom and sovereignty ; six times during the past 
three hundred years they have asserted it in arms. Standing 
on that fundamental right and again asserting it in arms in 
the face of the world, we hereby proclaim the Irish Republic 
as a Sovereign Independent State, and we pledge our lives and 
the lives of our comrades to the cause of its freedom, of its 
welfare, and of its exaltation among the nations. . . . 

The Republic guarantees civil and religious liberty, equal 
rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares 
its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole 



700 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

nation and of all its parts, cherishing all the children of the 
nation equally, and oblivious of the differences carefully 
fostered by an alien government, which have divided a minority 
from the majority in the past. . . . 

fFe place the cause of the Irish Republic under the pro- 
tection of the Most High God, whose blessing we invoke upon 
our arins. . . . In this supreme hour the Irish nation must, 
by its valour and discipline, and by the readiness of its children, 
to sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself 
worthy of the august destiny to which it is called. 

Signed on behalf of the Provisional Government, 
Thomas J. Clarke, 
Sean MacDiarmada, Thomas MacDonagh, 

P. H. Pears e, Eamonn Ceannt, 

James Connolly, Joseph Phinkett. 

There was little fighting on the first day of the Rising. Wholly 
unprepared, since it was believed that the Volunteers had aban- 
doned the project, the British authorities were taken by surprise 
and could not Immediately muster forces to attack the insurgents 
before they had "dug themselves in." Two Important points within 
the Dublin war area were, however, held by the British, namely, 
Trinity College, which was defended by the Officers' Training 
Corps, and Dublin Castle. The former dominated the old Parlia- 
ment House and two leading thoroughfares. The latter could 
have been taken easily enough, but the Volunteers suspected it to be 
more strongly garrisoned than it actually was, and abstained from 
attack until troops were got in, and it was too late. It was on 
the Tuesday that a British force of some 4,500 men, with artillery, 
attacked the rebel strongholds, and secured the Castle. Fierce 
fighting with rifle, bomb and bayonet went on In buildings near the 
Castle, these being cleared of Insurgents after desperate hand-to- 
hand battles. A cordon was then drawn around the north of the 
city, some of the rebel outposts being attacked and broken with 
rifle or artillery. 

Meanwhile large reinforcements were being hurried into Ire- 
land, via Kingstown, and on Wednesday, the south side of the city 
was brought within the cordon, which then began to be tightened, 
while the Insurgents, receiving no addition of strength to fortify 
their somewhat loose hold of a large area, consolidated their 
position. The British forces marching In from Kingstown had, how- 
ever, to fight their way. At Mount Street, the canal was covered 
by a Volunteer force In corner houses. The Invading column was 



EASTER RISING 701 

fired on, and a ferocious battle ensued. The rebels — who were but 
a few men — were ultimately dislodged or destroyed by waves of 
bombing raids. The British casualties were: officers killed 4, 
wounded 14; men, 216 killed or wounded. 

On the Thursday the encircling forces pressed closer and pene- 
trated to the central scene of operations, though every inch of the 
advance was contested by snipers and little bodies of desperate, 
daring men. Liberty Hall had been shattered by gunfire from the 
river, and now shells ignited great buildings in O'Connell Street. 
On Thursday night, the city was under a canopy of crimson smoke, 
while rifle, machine gun and cannon contested in a furious crescendo. 
The lines of communication between the insurgent strongholds were 
broken, and the British forces concentrated on reducing head- 
quarters, the General Post Office, over which the Republican flag 
still flew. 

Meanwhile what was happening in the rest of Ireland? 

When nev/s reached the country battalions that, despite the 
Countermanding Order, a Rising had begun, there were necessarily 
divided counsels. All over Ireland, the thought of a few hundred 
youths, ill-armed, standing their ground against the might of 
Britain, sent an unforgettable thrill. Men knew that the circle of 
fire and steel was contracting 'round the daring insurgents, and 
everywhere they wrung their hands, saying: "Can we do nothing?" 
What could they do? The very best organised counties had not 
munitions for an hour's fight. Still, here and there, the cast was 
made. The Co. Dublin Volunteers, acting from Swords, pierced 
into Co. Meath, taking R. I. C. barracks, and fighting a pitched 
battle at Ashbourne with a constabulary force that was defeated at 
the cost of heavy casualties. Dr. Hayes, later elected to the Dail, 
was the leading figure in this smaller campaign. 

In Co. Galway Liam Mellows led a large body of insurgents on 
Galway city. A gunboat in Galway Bay dispersed them by shell- 
fire. At Athenry, the insurgent camp was surrounded, and dis- 
persed when the hopelessness of resistance became clear. Liam 
Mellows escaped capture by that remarkable resourcefulness which 
enabled him to make Galway so formidable. 

In Co. Wexford Enniscorthy was seized on the Thursday morn- 
ing, and the Republican flag was hoisted over the Athenaeum. The 
greater part of northern Co. Wexford was also taken. Great 
administrative skill was shown, order being maintained, not by the 
armed Volunteers, but by a civil force, the Irish Republican Police. 
A large military force with artillery was sent to capture Enniscorthy, 
but happily the extremely bloody struggle that might have taken 



702 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

place was avoided. News came on Saturday that Dublin had sur- 
rendered and that Pearse had ordered all Volunteers to lay down 
their arms. As with the force at Swords, representatives of the 
insurgents were motored to Dublin under a safe conduct and the 
white flag, to see Pearse in person. Heartbroken, the delegates 
returned from the prison to the rebel town. Their impulse to fight 
a despairing fight to a finish was overcome by the good oflices of 
an inter-denominational Peace Committee, and they, too, joined in 
the surrender. 

How had the surrender come about? 

On Friday, a terrific bombardment had set the centre of Dublin 
city wholly ablaze. Banks, churches and business places were aflame 
and tottering. The loss of life among non-combatants was appall- 
ing. Amid the carnage, Pearse wrote his final manifesto. Con- 
nolly lay wounded vrith a bullet througli ilm thigh, still directing 
the defence, 

"I desire now" [Pearse wrote] "lest I may not have an oppor- 
tunity later, to pay homage to the gallantn,' of the Soldiers of Irish 
Freedom who have during the past four days been writing with fire 
and steel the most glorious chapter in the later history of Ire- 
land. . . . 

'Tor four days they have fought and toiled almost without 
cessation, almost without sleep, and in the intenals of fighting, they 
have sung songs of the freedom of Ireland. No m'an has complained, 
no man has asked 'why?' Each individual has spent himself, happy 
to pour out his strength for Ireland and for freedom. If they do 
not win this fight, they will at least have desen'ed to win it. But 
win it they will, though they may win it in death. . . . 

"If we accomplish no more than we have accomplished, I am satis- 
fied. I am satisfied that we have saved Ireland's honour ... of the 
fatal countermanding order which prevented those plans from being 
carried out, I shall not speak further. Both Eoin'MacNeill and we 
have acted in the best interests of Ireland. 

"For my part, as to anything I have, done in this, I am not afraid 
to face either the judgment of God or tlie judgment of posterity." 

Here we see Pearse facing impending defeat. His reference 
to Eoin MacNeill suggests that he felt it was well that a Rising had 
been made, and also well that the whole country had not come into 
it. A localised rising was enough to give Ireland her blood sacri- 
fice: MacNeill's order had spared many who would otherwise have 
been lost. If military victory was impossible, it was well that the 
necesi::.ry sacrifice was limited. 

Commandant Daly had destroyed the Linen Hall Barracks but 



EASTER RISING 703 

was now surrounded at the Four Courts. Countess Markievicz, 
after being driven out of trenches in Stephens' Green, was defend- 
ing the College of Surgeons. Commandant McDonagh was sur- 
rounded in Jacob's factory. Commandant de Valera, whose men 
had so tenaciously resisted the advance from the south, was now 
holding Boland's Mills, while Commandant Ceannt held part of the 
South Dublin Union. 

On Saturday, the General Post Office was set aflame, and the 
Republican Provisional government had to evacuate its so-bravely 
defended headquarters. In the dash to Moore Street — a neighbour- 
ing bye-way — The. O'Rahilly, who had opposed the Rising with 
MacNeill, but had gone out in it because he felt himself commiitted 
to that course, was shot dead. From the new headquarters soon 
after noon, a message was sent by Pearse, by the hand of a Red 
Cross nurse, asking for terms. These were refused, and at 2 
o'clock, Pearse surrendered to Sir John Maxwell unconditionally. 
He then sent out notices to the Commandants of surviving Volun- 
teer bodies, ordering arms to be laid down : 

"In order to prevent the further slaughter of unarmed people, and 
in the hope of saving the lives of our followers, now surrendered 
and hopelessly outnumbered." 

And so the Rising ended, the outstanding forces laying down 
arms on the Sunday. 

But the tragic story was as yet only beginning. 

Arms had not been laid down, sniping had not died into silence, 
the smoke of the terrific conflagration in the heart of Dublin had 
not settled, before a huge roundup of Irish Irelanders began all 
over Ireland. In every village there were arrests. To have been 
heard speaking Irish was in some cases cause enough for the bread- 
winner to be torn from the family. The horrors of the congested 
prisons are too disgusting to narrate. Soon the hundreds and hun- 
dreds of prisoners were sent to rat-ridden internment camps across 
the water. 

In ones and twos fifteen leaders ^ of the Rising were shot after 

3 The leaders shot were : — Padraic Pearse and his brother William, James 
Connolly, Eamonn Kent. Michael O'Hanrahan, Sean MacDermott, Con Colbert, 
J. J. Houston, Thomas Kent (shot in Cork), Joseph Mary Plnnkett, Edward Daly, 
Michael Mallon, Thomas MacDonagh, Tom Clark and John MacBride. 

Sir John Maxwell, in command of the British Army in Dublin, deserves having 
his name transmitted to posterity in conjunction with the names of the martyred 
ones. In response to the cry of the British nation for the blood of "scoundrels" 
guilty of the fearful crime of fighting their land's invader. Sir John, with an 
expedition that won him praise, blotted out the lives of fifteen of Ireland's 



704 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

secret military trial. Many of the executed prisoners were mere 
boys. All the signatories of the Republican declaration were put 
to death. Some death sentences, however, were commuted to 
sentences of imprisonment for life, happily for Ireland, Comman- 
dant de Valera escaping thus. 

The callous shooting of the boy prisoners, most of all, roused 
in Ireland a terrific storm of indignation. The remarkable spirit 
of religious devotion displayed by the doomed men stirred the 
depths of Irish emotion. Sinn Fein became at once the creed of all 
Nationalist Ireland. The British had dubbed the rebel movement 
"Sinn Fein." And in the furnace of national suffering, all parties 
who stood for the nation were welded into one, and the name "Sinn 
Fein" was accepted. 

After a year the prisoners were released for the purpose of 
English propaganda in America. During their imprisonment a 
man hitherto known only as an obscure mathematical professor, 
a silent Gaelic League and Volunteer worker, had been strangely 
recognised as the national leader. This was Eamon de Valera. 
At the Release, he shot, as it were, to the nation's lead in a flash. 
One week, his name was scarcely known; the next he was recognised 
as the man on the bridge. Character alone was the cause of this 
remarkable ascendancy. Cool, resolved, gentle, masterly, humble, 
firm: Eamon de Valera impressed all. He is no great orator like 
Pearse; he does not pretend to have Griffith's marvellous mastery 
of political science, and indeed, talks always of Griffith as his 
teacher: but he combines the idealism of one with the statesmanship 
of the other. Pearse performed the revolutionary task he set him- 
self, but we cannot imagine him as counsellor in days of peace or 
negotiation; Griffith alone could not win the nation's adherence. 
The stars were lucky when Ireland was given three men so remark- 
able in one generation. But where in political history is there a 
finer spectacle than the superb self-sacrifice with which Griffith 
handed the leadership of Sinn Fein to his young disciple, saying: 
"The people of Ireland now have a leader who is both soldier and 
statesman" ? 

When, one year later again, that is, in 191 8, England decreed 
the conscription of Ireland's manhood to save her from the great 

noblest — of the world's noblest The manful Connolly was lying in hospital, 
helpless, and possibly dying from the wounds got in the fight. But the blood of 
the vanquished and dying was necessary to the victor's complete and happy satis- 
faction. So, the helpless one was borne on a stretcher to the place of execution, 
solicitously propped up aqrainst a support and shot dead. The rebel's foul crime 
was expiated. The Just One, the Owner of Ireland, was temporarily appeased. — 
S. M. M. 



EASTER RISING 705 

German advance, it was 'round de Valera that the whole nation 
rallied. His coolness and wisdom saved Ireland from a bloody 
defeat, and secured a moral victory. Very nearly was Ireland 
plunged into a life-and-death struggle, but de Valera's resolved 
bearing, and the splendid succour offered by the Church, held the 
whole people firm and calm. Before the determined nation, 
fortified with spiritual strength, those who had planned a des- 
perate onslaught hesitated, and at last withdrew. Irish conscription 
was, at the last moment, abandoned, and Ireland for the first time 
in many centuries escaped the scourge prepared for her. 

In December, at the General Election, all Nationalist Ireland 
declared its allegiance to the Repubhcan ideal, and the Sinn Fein 
policy of abstention from Westminster was adopted. In January, 
the republican representatives assembled in Dublin and founded 
Ddil Eire arm, the Irish Constituent Assembly, proclaiming the 
Republic once again. A message was sent to the nations of the 
world requesting the recognition of the free Irish State, and a 
national government was erected. 

The best history of the Sinn Fein movement Is The Evolution of 
Sinn Fein, by Prof. R. M. Henry of Belfast University [Talbot 
Press]. A useful companion is P. S. O'Hegarty's small brochure 
Sinn Fein: An Illumination [Maunsel]. Also Aodh de Blacam's 
Towards the Republic, which deals with Sinn Fein social ideals as 
well as history. 

Griffith's Resurrection of Hungary is important. Francis P. 
Jones' History of Sinn Fein [Kenedy] is fine. 



CHAPTER LXXX 

THE LAST WAR? 

No sooner had the new Government begun to function, established 
its Courts, appointed Consuls, started a stock-taking of the country's 
undeveloped natural resources, and put a hundred constructive 
schemes to work, than Britain stepped in, with her army of Soldiers 
and Constabulary, to counter the work, harassing and imprisoning 
the workers. This move of England's called forth a secretly built-up 
Irish Republican Army (developed from The Irish Volunteers), 
which, early in 1920, began a guerilla warfare, and quickly suc- 
ceeded in clearing vast districts of the Constabulary who were ever 
England's right arm in Ireland. 

Lloyd George met this not only by pouring into Ireland regi- 
ments of soldiers with tanks, armored cars, aeroplanes, and all the 
other terrorising paraphernalia that had been found useful in the 
European War, but also by organising and turning loose upon Ire- 
land an Irregular force of Britons, among the most vicious and 
bloodthirsty known to history — the force which quickly became 
notorious to the world under the title of the Black and Tans. And 
then, with carefully planned purpose to quickly break the Irish 
spirit and subdue the nation, was waged upon the Irish people — 
alike combatants and non-combatants, Irish women as well as 
men, toddling child and tottering aged — a war of vengeance, un- 
paralleled for blind fury and fearful cruelty by any war in any 
civilised country of the world since the seventeenth century. The 
wholesale burning of a hundred villages, towns, cities, the looting, 
the spoliation of the inhabitants, though in themselves appalling, 
were as nothing compared with the cold-blooded murders per- 
petrated by the British, and the elaborate refinement of torture, 
worse far than death, which they visited on non-combatants as 
well as combatants — fearful tortures that frequently only ended 
when slow death snatched from them their prey. 

It was intended that the job of "settling Ireland" should, like 
Cromwell's campaign on which it was modelled, be sharp, short, and 
decisive. It should be over and done with ere the outside world 
awoke to the fearful reality of what was happening. And the 

706 



THE LAST WAR? 707 

English press, with a bare two or three honourable exceptions, the 
English correspondents of foreign newspapers, and the English 
cable service, well did their part to back, the British army in the 
field. They saw to it that not only was the hideousness of their 
campaign in Ireland concealed from the world, but that instead, 
the brave Irish boys, fighting for freedom a fearfully unequal fight, 
were lied about and painted to the world as corner boy ruflians. 
And, loyally doing their bit in the disgraceful campaign of hood- 
winking the world, the highest, most "Honourable" Government: 
officials, from Premier Lloyd George down to Irish Secretary Sir 
Hamar Greenwood, from their places in the British House of Com- 
mons deliberately and persistently falsified the accounts of occur- 
rences in Ireland, denied, without wincing, the barbarous crimes of 
the British which they knew and approved of, and unblushingly 
fathered upon the clean-fighting Irish boys callous and diabolical 
cruelties that were native alone to the breasts of their own — even to 
insinuating that the murders, by disguised and masked British ruf- 
fians, of Mayor MacCurtain of Cork and Mayor Clancy of Lim- 
erick were perpetrated by their own Republican comrades, who 
slew them as traitors. Thus did the Honourable British gentlemen 
blacken the dead as well as the living. 

Yet the well-planned campaign for the quick wasting of Ireland, 
and breaking of Ireland's spirit did not come off on schedule. The 
atrocities which were meant to frighten and subdue, only stimulated 
the outraged nation to more vigour: and by the time the fight was 
expected to end it was found to be only well begim. And, carefully 
as the army of falsifiers guarded every gate by which the truth 
might escape to the world, tricklings of truth had begun to find their 
way out, and the world was beginning to whisper of strange British 
doings in Ireland. More than by anything else, probably, the world 
v/as awakened to the truth of the situation in Ireland through the 
extraordinary heroism of Terence MacSwiney (Mayor of Cork in 
succession to the martyred MacCurtain), who in protest against 
the foreign tyranny which seized and jailed him as a criminal for 
the guilt of working for his country, refused to eat in British dun- 
geon, till, after three months of slow and painful starving to death, 
with the wondering world literally by his bedside watching his death 
agonies, he at length went to join the joyful company of martyrs 
who had died that Ireland might live. 

The world was stirred. The terrible truth about Britain's rape 
of Ireland began to be realised — and began to call forth muttered 
foreign protest. Only then, when they realised that they were found 
out, an appreciable portion of the Britons themselves began to 



7o8 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

protest — chiefly, not to save Ireland, but to save Britain's face.^ 
The general aspect of the British Campaign in Ireland is best 
summarised, perhaps, in the findings of the American Commission 
on Conditions in Ireland — a Commission whose members were se- 
lected by the American Committee of One Hundred — this latter 
being composed of many of the most representative men and 
women in America, Protestant, Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian 
and Jew — including Governors of States, Senators, Congressmen, 
Protestant, Catholic and Methodist Bishops, College Presidents, 
Editors, Business men, Labor men. Following are the most re- 
markable of their findings : 

"1. The Imperial British Government has created and introduced 
into Ireland a force of at least 78,000 men, many of them youthful and 
inexperienced, and some of them convicts; and has incited that force 
to unbridled violence. 

^ The Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury speaking in the House of Lords 
(Feb. 22nd. 1^1) said, with just indignation, "What is being done in Ireland is 
exactly what we condemned the Germans for doing in Belgium." 

The Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in England, Rev. Duncan Mac- 
Gregor, said, "The result of the present policy is that British rule has become a 
by-word and a scoflf in every country in Europe, and across the Atlantic. ... I won- 
der whether the whole Church of God cannot speak with united voice on so clear 
and crying a moral issue." 

Ex-Prime Minister Asquith declared, "Things are being done in Ireland with 
the knowledge and approval, if not under the direction of. Government officials, 
which would disgrace the blackest annals of the lowest despotism of Europe." 

The British Labor Party found themselves forced to send a Commission to 
Ireland to investigate. After journeying to the various parts of Ireland most 
afTected by the war machine, and interviewing witnesses to some of the most terrible 
of the occurrences, as well as leading men and officials of both sides, they found 
themselves forced to give a report that made myriads of their British people gasp. 
The gist of their findings may be conveyed in one sentence taken from the closing 
paragraph of their report: "Things are being done in Ireland, in the name of 
Britain, which must make her name stink in the nostrils of the whole world." 

Hon. C. F. G. Masterman at Macclesfield : "Speaking with a full sense of my 
responsibility as former Cabinet Minister, I declare the evidence is overwhelming 
that a systematic policy of terror is being pursued in Ireland — defended by Lloyd 
George, backed up by the flagrant lies of Sir Hamar Greenwood, and organised by 
officials in high places in Ehiblin. The attempt is not merely to punish the guilty, 
but to break the whole spirit of Ireland by inflicting punishment upon people who 
are as innocent as babes unborn. That was the system which, under the German 
invasion of Belgium, turned the whole world against Germany. Yet in every par- 
ticular the things going on in Ireland to-day are a replica — in some cases they are 
worse than — the things the Germans did in Belgium." 

Lord Hugh Cecil (in the House of Commons, on March 1st, 1921) : "The 
methods adopted in Ireland have no precedent whatever in the story of the restora- 
tion of law and order by previous governments in the nineteenth century." 

General Gough, formerly of the British Army — one of the Army leaders who. 
when a follower of Carson, in 1914, threatened to mutiny if "Home Rule" was 
forced upon the Orangemen — now wrote a letter to the press (March 1st, 1921) 
in the course of which he said : "Law and order has given place to a bloody and 
brutal anarchy, in which the armed agents of the Crown violate every law in aim- 
less and vindictive and insolent savagery. England has departed further from her 
own standards, and further from the standards even of any nation in the world, 
not excepting the Turk and the Zulu, than has ever been known in history before." 



THE LAST WAR? 709 

"2, The Imperial British forces in Ireland have indiscriminately 
killed innocent men, women, and children; have discriminately assas- 
sinated persons suspected of being republicans ; have tortured and shot 
prisoners w^hile in custody, adopting the subterfuges of 'refusal to 
halt' and 'attempting to escape' ; and have attributed to alleged 'Sinn 
Fein extremists' the British assassination of prominent Irish Repub- 
licans. 

"3. House burning and wanton destruction of villages and cities 
by Imperial British forces under Imperial British officers have been 
countenanced and ordered by officials of the British Government, and 
elaborate provision by gasoline sprays and bombs has been made in 
a number of instances for systematic incendiarism as part of a plan 
of terrorism. 

"4. A campaign for the destruction of the means of existence of 
the Irish people has been conducted by the burning of factories, cream- 
eries, crops, and farm implements, and the shooting of farm animals. 
This campaign is carried on regardless of the political views of their 
owners, and results in widespread and acute suffering among women 
and children. 

"5. Acting under a series of proclamations issued by the competent 
military authorities of the Imperial British forces hostages are carried 
by forces exposed to the fire of the Republican Army ; fines are levied 
upon towns and villages as punishment for alleged oftenses of in- 
dividuals ; private property is destroyed in reprisal for acts with which 
the owners have no connection ; and the civilian population is subjected 
to an inquisition upon the theory that individuals are in possession 
of information valuable to the military forces of Great Britain. These 
acts of the Imperial British forces are contrary to the laws of peace 
or war among modern civilised nations." 

In the spring of 192 1 there was galloped through the English 
Parliament a "Home Rule Bill" for Ireland — whose object was, 
by giving the eastern part of Ulster, the Orange corner, a Parlia- 
ment of its own, to detach it from the rest of Ireland, thus dividing 
the nation on sectarian lines, and by the Orangemen's aid strength- 
ening the foreign grip on the whole country. The Orangemen (all 
British in blood) — ever the Ascendancy in Ireland treading on the 
necks of the real Irish — had professed that they feared to trust 
themselves to the certain intolerance of an Irish Parliament — 
though the true fact was well known to English statesmen : even 
Sir Hamar Greenwood, who blackened Nationalist Ireland by every 
device in his power, having had to state in the British House of 
Commons, *'I am constrained to confess that the North is the only 
part of Ireland where people are interfered with on account of 
their religion." These Northeasterners in July, 1920, celebrated 
their coming freedom from an intolerant Irish Parliament by in- 



710 THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 

stituting a series of pogroms against the minority among them — in 
the course of which in twelve months more than one hundred of the 
minority were killed by being beaten, stabbed, kicked, or shot to 
death, and more than one thousand injured, while the homes and 
belongings of several hundreds were burnt, and six thousand Na- 
tionalists driven out of employment. It is to be remembered in this 
connection that the motto of these noble Orangemen is "Civil and 
Religious Liberty." 

Premier Lloyd George, having ignored the rising tide of world 
indignation until Britain's hold on Ireland's northeastern corner was 
well secured and clamped, then had King George go to Belfast to 
open Britain's branch Parliament there, and speak a prepared piece, 
calling for union among the people he was dividing, and asking also 
for peace between England and Ireland. And then in deference to 
his King's pious wish (so he informed the world) the Prime Min- 
ister invited Sinn Fein to a parley. Ireland had proved uncon- 
querable by any other means. 

President De Valera, for the Irish Republic, accepted the invi- 
tation. A truce was arranged between the invader's army and the 
army of the Republic in July, 192 1. And the English Prime Minis- 
ter received with honour the head of that body which he had with 
long and faithful persistence denounced to the world as "the 
Irish murder gang." 

To De Valera, in this parley, offer was made to give Ireland 
what George called "Dominion status" — supposedly that amount of 
freedom under the British Crown which is the lot of Canada and 
Australia — but less the control by Britain of the Irish harbours, seas, 
skies, and some other such perquisites — which offer was promptly 
and unanimously rejected by An Dail Eireann, Rather than sanc- 
tion Britain's covetous and dishonest grab of anything that was 
Ireland's the Irish representatives preferred that their people should 
return to the wilderness. 

Then, after resorting to threat of a renewed war upon Ireland 
far more fierce than had gone before — which threat caused no Aveak- 
ening of the Irish resolve — the English Prime Minister invited 
Ireland to send delegates to a peace conference, on the understand- 
ing that the idea of separating Ireland from the British Crown 
should not be considered. De Valera, for An Dail Eireann, re- 
fused such condition. And, beaten from one position after another, 
Premier Lloyd George finally called for a conference, free of con- 
ditions, to be held in London on October i ith, 192 1. And President 
De Valera accepted the inY'itation. 



THE LAST WAR? 711 

[On this rage write, or paste in, the result of the Peace Confsrence.] 



CHAPTER LXXXI 

THE DAWNING 

The final chapter of the story of the Irish Race will not be written 
till, please God, many a long and glorious Irish day shall yet have 
come and gone. The final chapter of our partial story cannot be 
better written than in the words of Ethna Carbery, who shortly 
before her early death saw with her spirit eyes the radiant Dawn 
dethroning Eire's dark Night of Sorrow — and in beautiful words 
pictured for us her vision — 

MO CHRAOIBHIN CNO.^ 

A Sword of Light hath pierced the dark! Our ej^s have seen the Star! 
Oh, Eire, leave the ways of sleep now days of promise are! 
The rusty spears upon your walls are stirring to and fro, 
In dreams they front upHfted shields — Then wake, 
Mo Chraoibhin Cno! 

The little waves creep whispering where sedges fold you in, 
And round you are the barrows of your buried kith and kin ; 
Oh! famine-wasted, fever-burnt, they faded like the snow 
Or set their hearts to meet the steel — for you. 
Mo Chraoibhin Cno! 

Their names are blest, their caoine sung, our bitter tears are dried ; 
We bury Sorrow in their graves, Patience we cast aside ; 
Within the gloom we hear a voice that once was ours to know — 
'Tis P'reedom — Freedom calling loud, Arise, 
Mo Chraoibhin Cno! 

Afar beyond that empty sea, on many a battle-place. 

Your sons have stretched brave hands to Death before the foeman's face — 
Down the sad silence of your rest their war-notes faintly blow. 
And bear an echo of your name — of yours, 
Mo Chraoibhin Cno! 

^ Pronounced mo chreevcen no, "My cluster of nuts" — my brown-haired girl, 
». c, Ireland. During our many dark ages when it was treason for our singers 
to sing of Ireland, the olden poets sang of, and to, their beloved, under many such 
endearing and figurative titles. 

712 



THE DAWNING 713 

Then wake, a gradh! We yet shall win a gold crown for your head, 
Strong wine to make a royal feast — the white wine and the red — 
And in your oaken mether the yellow mead shall flow 
What day you rise in all men's eyes — a Queen, 
Mo Chraoibhin Cno! 

The silver speech our fathers knew shall once again be heard ; 
The fire-lit stor}^ crooning song, sweeter than lilt of bird ; 
Your quicken-tree shall break in flower, its ruddy fruit shall glow, 
And the Gentle People dance beneath its shade — 
Mo Chraoibhin Cno! 

There shall be peace and plentj' — the kindly open door; 
Blessings on all who come and go — the prosperous or the poor — 
The misty glens and purple hills a fairer tint shall show, 
When your splendid Sun shall ride the skies again — 
Mo Chraoibhin Cno! 



THE FOUR WINDS OF EIRINN 

The Poems of Ethna Carbery 

New Enlarged Edition, with Memoir by Seumas MacManus, and with Portrait of the Author 

Fiona Macleod, in an article upon "The Four Winds of Eirinn" in The Fortnightly 
Review, said : — 

"One copy of such a book as 'The Four Winds of Eirinn' is enough to light many unseen 
fires. ... In essential poetic faculty Ethna Carbery falls behind no Irish poet save Mr. Yeats 
and 'A. E.' As an Irish writer for an Irish-public. I doubt if any of these just named has 
more intimately reached the heart of the people. Than Mr. Yeats, Ethna Carbery, while not 
less saturated with the Gaelic atmosphere, possesses a simplicity of thought and diction foreign to 
the most subtle of contemporary poets. . . . Her earliest as her latest verse has the quality of 
song and the vibration of poetry." 

Joaquin Miller says: — The Four Winds of Eirinn gave me the most delightful memories of 
my life. The music of it lives and lingers as some far faint song of the minstrels of old time, 
that I may never hear again; as perfume and memory blending in one; and indescribable. It 
brought me the atmosphere of a diviner age. 

Joyce Kilmer (New York Times) : — Ethna Carbery is one of the few real poets of the last 
hundred years. 

The (London) Daily News — In this book we move from wonder to wonder. It is natural 
magic in the truest sense of the word. No less remarkable than the prodigality of fancy is 
the richness and variety of melody which animate its sounds. The music is everywhere true, 
and as full as it is new. One marvels at the spontaneoufness of every thought and every word. 
With as little effort, or premeditation, as the birds in the Land of Perpetual Youth, sang this 
gifted child of Irish song. 

Leinster Leader — It is not to be wondered at that poetry of such quality should at oncf 
soar on deathless wings to Fame. 

The Globe — Ethna Carbery surpasses all other poets of the Celtic school in the heart 
quality of her verse. . . . Hers is a pure white passion for beauty, such as is revealed by the 
few poets of the world. 

Meath Chronicle — She was one of the noblest daughters Ireland has ever claimed. Her 
glowing genius, and the womanly tenderness of her poet-heart, live in the songs she has left us 
as a heritage. 

Aberdeen Free Press — The most striking production of the Irish Literary Revival. 

United Irishman — She was herself a poem incarnate; tender and sweet, and true and pure, 
gracious and refined as one of her Irish princesses, and kindly as one of her peasants. God gave 
her grand, rare gifts, and she dedicated them to a high, holy cause. Her life was all too 
short, but her works will live after her for all time. 
Price $1.50 (and 10c. postage). From THE IRISH PUBLISHING CO., Box 1300, New York City. 

PROSE WORKS OF ETHNA CARBERY 
IN THE CELTIC PAST, Hero Tales 
THE PASSIONATE HEARTS, Love Stories 
With, cover design, in three colours, by "A. E." 

Irish Independent — Seldom, if ever, has the most potent of passions which stir the souls and 
sv/ay the destinies cf mankind been painted with more beauty and power. 

New York Times — They are full of the beautiful pathos of Irish poetry, the magic of 
Irish music, and the elusive charm of Irish folk-lore, and convey the atmosphere of sincerity, 
which only flows from a pen dipped in the author's own heart. 

Cork Sun — Prose poems, combining the melody of the lyre, the dignity of the epic, and 
the vivid movement of the drama. 

To-day — These stories throb with an ardent, passionate love. They are beautifuL 1 
cannot write any better of them. 

New York Sun — Nothing in the new Irish revival is more Irish than these booksi. 

Glasgow Herald— Their very titles are instinct with a vague beauty. They come with a 
sense of revelation. . . . They are full of passion and joy and sadness. 

Morning Advertiser — "The Passionate Hearts" is magically appealing. 

Manchester Guardian — Full of enthusiasm and exaltation. 

The (Newark) Daily Advertiser — Full of joy and passion. 

Each book $1.50 (and 10c. postage). IRISH PUB. CO.. Box 1300, New York City. 



714 



AN HONOR-ROLL 

I COULD not have given up three years of time, and incurred the 
very heavy cost of producing this volume, but for the big aid given 
me by the special supporters whose names are here set down. Each 
of them, a warm lover of Ireland and Ireland's story, offered with 
glad readiness to sponsor the work, and generously guaranteed to 
take a large number of copies of it. 

To every one of these large-hearted ones, who thus made the 
work possible, I here record my deep gratitude — and this in a very 
special manner applies to those marked ** whose princely gener- 
osity prompted them to pay in advance for the copies which they 
bespoke. 

To all of the book's supporters I am ever thankful, 

Seumas MacManus. 



**A FEW IRISHMEN and Irish-Americans in Bolivia (per Caspar Nicolls, Oruro). 



**BALLESTY, PATRICIO, Buenos Aires, 
S. A. 
BARRETT, REV. THOS. H., LL.D., Buf- 
falo 
BARRY, REV. M. K., Caldwell, Kan. 
**BARRY, WM. P., Philadelphia, Pa. 

BATTLE, GEO. GORDON, New York City 
BOYLE, RT. REV. H. C, Pittsburgh, Pa. 
**BRADY, REV. D. J., Elizabeth, N. J. 

BRADY, REV. FRANCIS A., Philadelphia 
»'BRADY, NICHOLAS F., New York City-' 

BRADY, THOS. F., San Antonio, Tex. 
'*BRENNAN, JOHN (of Savannah), New 

York City 
**BRENNAN, MICHAEL, San Antonio de 
Areco, Argentina 
BRIAN BORU CLUB (per Daniel Bacon), 

New York City 
BROSNAN, REV. MICHAEL, St. George's,/ 

N'f'dland 
BROUGHAL, REV. DENIS J., Philadelphia 
BROWN, MRS. DENIS, Staunton, Va. 
BROWNE, J. P., Saskatoon, Sask. 
BROWNRIGG. H. W., St. John's, N'f'dland 
BUTLER, REV. FRANCIS J., Sommerville, 

Mass. 
CALLAGHAN, REV. JAS. F., Chicago, IlL 
GALLERY. JAS. G., Pittsburgh, Pa. 
CALWELL, ARTHUR A., Melbourne 
••CAMPBELL, RICHARD, New York City 
CANEVIN, RT. REV. F. REGIS. D.D., 

Pittsburgh, Pa. * 

CARMELITE FATHERS (per Vy. Rev. * 
Peter E. Magennis), New York City 

715 



CARNEY, FRANCIS J., Boston, Mass. 
CARROLL, REV. LAWRENCE A., E. 

Pittsburgh, Pa. 
CASEY, REV. JOS. A., Chicago, 111. 
CASEY, REV. MICHAEL J., St. Paul 
CASHIN, HON. M. P., St. John's, 
N'f'dland 
"CAVANAGH, REV. WALTER E., P.P., 

Almonte, Canada 
^*CH1TTICK, RT. REV. JAS. J., Hyde 

Park, Mass. 
^CITIZENS OF THE IRISH REPUBLIC 
(per Matt Butler, Secy.), New York City 
■*CLANCY. JNO. J., Brooklyn, N. Y. 
COAKLEY, DANIEL H., Boston 
COGHLAN, MSGR. GERALD P., Phila., 
Pa. 
■*COCKRAN, BOURKE, New York City ^ 
COHALAN, JUSTICE DANIEL F., New,/ 

York City 
COLLERAN, J. P., Youngstown, O. 
COLLINS, REV. RICHARD, San Jose, 

Cal. 
COLLINS, REV. THOS. H., Wheeling. 

W. Va. 
CONLEY, COLONEL L. D., New York 

City 
CONNOLLY, RT. REV. J. N., N. Y. City 
COONEY, REV. THOS., Naugatuck, Conn. 
COPPINGER, REV. JOS. F., So. Boston 
COTTER, JAS. E.. Apalachicola, Fla. 
•COYNE, REV. CHAS. J., Pittsburgh 
•COYNE, MARTIN, Box 1306, Jerome, Ariz. 
CREAGH, REV. JNO. T., Brookline 



7i6 



THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 



CREEGAN, PATK.. Condon, Cre. 
CRIMMINS, COLONEL M. L., New York 

City 
CROKE, REV. ANDREW, Chicago 
•*CRONIN. JNO. J., Girard, O. 

CROWLEY, REV. JNO. T., Phila., Pa. 
CROWLEY, REV. TIMOTHY E., St. Paul 
CULLINANE, REV. P. J., Detroit. 
••CUMMINS, REV. JNO. F., Roslindale, 
Mass. 
CURLEY, JAS. M., Jamaica Plains, Mass. 
CURTIN, REV. CORNELIUS, Fairview. 

Mont. 
CURTIN, REV. T. A., Newton Centre, 

Mass. 
DAWSON, WM. J., Elks Club, Detroit 
DEMPSEY, VY. REV. M. J. P., Detroit 
DENNISON, REV. JNO. J., Chicago 
DILLON, REV. GERALD, Scobey, Mont. 
DOHENY, EDWD. L., New York City 
DOHERTY, NEIL F., Boston 
DO LAN, REV. HENRY A., Batavia, N. Y. 
DOLAN, REV. FRANCIS X., D.D., Dor- 
chester, Mass. 
DONNELLY, RT. REV. JOHN E., Mon- 
treal 
DOODY. REV. DANIEL, Utica, N. Y. 
**DOOLEY, MICHAEL F., Providence 
DOUGHERTY, MISS LIDA, San Patricio, 

Tex. 
DRAKE, MRS. E. M., Regina, Sask. 
••DRISCOLL, DANIEL J.. Reading, Pa. 
••DUFFY, MISS TERESA, Ritz-Carlton, 
New York City 
DUVAL, C. L., New York City 
••DRYER, A. T., Sydney, Aus. 

DWYER, REV. WM. J., Gloucester, Mass. 
EMMANUEL, MOTHER M., Mt. St. Mary. 

Newburgh, N. Y. 
EMMETT KNIGHTS (per M. J. Walsh), 

Nome, Alaska 
EMMETT CLUB (per Thos. P. Reilly), 
Naugatuck, Conn. 
••ERNSTMAN, GEO., Oxnard, Cal. 

FARRAGHER, MICHAEL J., Youngs- 
town, O. 
FARRELL, JAS. A., New York City 
••FAUGHNAN, REV. JNO., Pittsburgh, Pa. 

FAY, REV. THOS. P. P., Ottawa 
••FEENEY BROTHERS, Buenos Aires 

FITZGERALD, E., Mayor of New Haven 
••FITZPATRICK, T. B.. Boston 

FLAHAVAN, JER., Ansonia, Conn. 
••FLANAGAN, JAS. P., Welch, W. Va. 
••FLANNERY, REV. EDMUND, Santa Lu- 
cia, Argentina 
FOGARTY, REV. PATK. F., Phila., Pa. 
FOLEY, RT. REV. MSGR. WM., Chicago 
FORD, PETER J., Wilmington, DeL 
FOYE, F. J.. Brownsville, Pa. 
FRANK, JOHN, Kendall, Mont. 
GAHAN, DR. THOMAS, Buenos Aires 
••GALLAGHER, JNO., Youngstown, O. 



''^GALLAGHER, RT. REV. MICHAEL J., 
Detroit, Mich. 
GALLAGHER, PATK., 525 W. 12-lth St., 
New York City 
••GALVIN, JNO., Fort Russell, Wyo. 
••GANLY, PADRAIC, Buenos Aires 

GANNON, FRANK S., New York City 
••GANNON, PATK., Snohomish, Wash. 

/gARRITY, THOS. J., Parkersburg, W. Va. 
••GAUGHAN, MR. M. J., McKeesport, Pa. 
GAVAGAN, JUSTICE EDWD. J., New 
York City 
••de GEARTY, MRS. M. A., Buenos Aires 
••GEARTY, REV. R. J., San Antonio de 
Areco, Argentina 
GERSIE, MRS. G. L., Passaic, N. J. 
••GIBBONS, JNO. T., New Orleans 
♦♦GIBBS, M. P., K. C, St. John's, N'f'dland 
GILLEN, REV. THOS. A., Pittsburgh 
GILSON, JUDGE JNO. J., New Haven 
GOODWIN, BERNARD, E. Rochester, 

N. Y. 
GORMLEY, MISS JANE A., Providence 
GOUGH, REV. W. P., Phila., Pa. 
••GOURLEY, WM. B., Paterson, N. J. 
GRAHAM, JNO., Hotel Statler, Cleveland, 
O. 
••GREANEY, REV. JNO. J.. Woodlawn, Pa. 
GREEN, VERY REV. JAMES F., O.S.A., 

Chicago 
GREENSIL, REV. JNO. J., Phila., Pa. 
GRIFFIN, VY, REV. EDWD. P., Pitts- 
burgh 
GRIFFIN, REV. JOHN F.. Holyoke, Mass. 
GRIMES, RT. REV. JOHN, D.D., Syra- 
cuse, N. Y. 
GUERIN, JUSTICE EDMUND, Montreal 
GUILFOILE, FRANCIS P., Waterbury, 

Conn. 
GUILFOILE, JOS., Waterbury, Conn. 
••HAGERTY, MISS E. F., Greenwich, N. Y. 
HANNA, MOST REV. ARCHBISHOP 

EDW. J., D.D., San Francisco. Cal. 
HANNIGAN, REV. JOS. J., Phila., Pa. 
••HARE. J. S. M., Galesburg, 111. 

HARRIGAN, JNO. F., Worcester, Mass. 
HARRINGTON, REV. JERE,, Minneapolis 
HAYNES, MISS LIZZIE, Sydney, Aus. 
HEALY, MAJOR M. F., New York City 
••HEALY, RICHARD, Worcester, Mass. 

HEARN, JNO. J., Westfield, Mass. 
••HEAVEY, J. J.. K.S.G., Valparaiso, Chile 
HEENEY, REV. BERNARD C, Chicago 
HENNESSY. JNO. A., Providence, R. I. 
HENRY, JAS. A., Linwood, Pa. 
HEWLETT, REV. ERAS. A., Detroit 
HIBERNIAN SOCIETY (per W. Ryan, 

President), Baltimore, Md. 
HIBERNIAN SOCIETY (per Judge Peter 

W. Meldrim), Savannah, Ga. 
HICKEY. RT. REV. WM. A., Providence, 
R. I. 
••HILLIARD, MRS. F. T., Detroit, Mich. 



AN HONOR-ROLL 



717 



•*HOGAN, GEO., Norfolk, Va. 
HURLEY, RT. REV. MONS. EDWD. F., 
Boston, Mass. 
•*HURLEY, M. A., Pocatello, Idaho 
HYNES, REV. BERNARD J., Pittsburgh, 

Pa. 
HYNES, REV. JAS. A., Chicago, 111. 
IRISH AMERICAN ASSN. (per Patk. 

Mulrooney), Wilmington, Del. 
IRVINE, TOM (of Derry Walls), Ed- 
monton, Alta. 
ISENBERG, MRS. HANS, Lihue Kauai, 

Hawaiian Islands 
JENNINGS, REV. DR. GILBERT P., 

Cleveland, O. 
JOHNSON, REV. DAVID M., S. J., Chi- 
cago 
JOY, EDWARD, Syracuse, N. Y. 
KANE. MISS KATE L., Rochester, N. Y. 
KEANE, DENNIS, New Haven 
**KEANE, RT. REV. FRANCIS, Pittsburgh 
KEEGAN, DR. EDWD., St. John's, 

N'f'dland 
KEEGAN, PETER C., Van Buren, Me. 
♦•KEELEY, MISS MARGARET, Euclid, 
Minn. 
KEENAN, JAS. E., Owen Sound, Ont. 
**KENDALL, MRS. S. N., Madison, Wis. 
♦*KENNY, REV. DR., Youngstown, O. 
••KENNEDY, DANIEL, Elmira, N. Y. 
KENNEDY, JAMES, Teller, Alaska 
••KENNEDY, P. M., Youngstown, O. 

KIELY, MICHAEL E., Waterbury, Conn. 
KIERNAN, JNO., SR., New York City 
KIERNAN, ROBT., JR., Freeport, N. Y. 
KILLEEN, JNO. P., Pittsburgh 
KIRLIN, VY. REV. JOS. L. J., Phila., Pa. 
KIRWIN, VY. REV. JAS. M., Galveston, 

Tex. 
LOMASNEY, MARTIN M., Boston, Mass. 
LUDDY, TIM., Waterbury, Conn. 
LYNCH, MICHAEL, Newburgh, N. Y. 
LYNCH. REV. WM. J., Chicago 
LYONS, REV. GEO. A., So. Boston 
LYONS, WM. SEXTON, Northampton 
MAHON, REV. THOS. P., Cleveland 
MALLOY, REV. FRANCIS A., Cleveland 
MALONEY, THOS. J. (Lorillard Co.). 

New York City 
MANN, MRS. WM., Bayonne, N. J. 
MANNIX. THOS.. Portland, Ore. 
MARTIN, REV. DR., Youngstown, O. 
MARTIN, GEO. J., W. Newton, Mass. 
••MEAD, MAYOR JNO. C, Ansonia, Conn. 
MEARS, REV. E., Youngstown, O. 
MEATHE, REV. MATTHEW, Detroit 
MEENAN, P. J., Pittsburgh, Pa. 
MEHEGAN. MR. J. J., Kinston, N. C. 
MEIGHEN, THOS. J., Preston, Minn. 
••MINOGUE, REV. THOS. F., Anselmo, 
Neb. 
MOGAN, PATK., Fairbanks, Fox. Alaska 
MONAHAN, REV. JAS. C, Phila., Pa. 



MOONEY, J. P., Lakewood, O. 
•♦MOONEY, RT. REV. JOS. F., New York 
City 
MORAN, DANIEL J., Lynn, Mass. 
••MORGAN, WM., Fray Bentos. Uruguay 
••MORI ARTY, JNO. E., Waterbury, Conn. 
MORONEY, W. J., Dallas, Tex. 
MORRISON, MRS. THOS. F., Chanute, 

Kas. 
MORRISSEY, REV. JNO. J., Chicago 
MULLINS, WM., Flint, Mich. 
MURPHY, REV. DENIS N., Wilmerding, 
Pa. 
••MURPHY, EDWD., Rosario, Argentina 
MURPHY, RT. REV. EUGENE M., Phila., 
Pa. 
•♦MURPHY, REV. GEO. F., Cleveland 

MURPHY, REV. JAS. J., Brighton, Mass. 
♦•McALENNEY, REV. P. F., Hartford, 
Conn. 
McBRIDE, MICHAEL, San Diego, Cal. 
McCABE, VY. REV. FRANCIS J., Pitts- 
burgh 
McCABE, REV. F. X., De Paul University. 

Chicago 
McCABE, REV. JNO. J., Detroit 
••McCAFFERTY, JAS. A., Brooklyn, N. Y. 

McCaffrey, HUGH, Peru, Ind. 
••McCANN, SISTER MARY AGNES, Mt. 

St. Joseph, O. 
••McCANNA, C. ROY, Burlington, Wis. 

McCarthy, J. J., Ogallala, Neb. 
•♦McCONEGLY, JNO. D., Homestead, Pa. 
McCORMICK, j. S., San Francisco, Cal. 
McCORT, RT. REV. JOHN JOS., Altoona, 

Pa. 
McCRAN, SENATOR THOS. F., Paterson, 

N. J. 
McDERMOTT, rev. I., Jenkintown, Pa. 
••McDERlMOTT, RT. REV. C. A., McKees- 
port. Pa. 
McDonnell, RT. rev. patk. j., Chi- 
cago 
McDONOUGH, STEPHEN J., Baltimore, 

Md. 
McEVOY, FRANK P., Waterbury, Conn. 
McFADDEN, REV. MICHAEL A., Swan- 
ton, O. 
••McFARLAND, STEPHEN, New York City 
••McGANN, MICHAEL F., New Haven 

McGARRY, REV. JXO. J., Boston, Mass. 
••McGARRITY, JOS., Phila., Pa. 
McGARRY, JNO. A., Chicago, 111. 
McGILLEN, P., New York City 
••McGINNISS, BRIG. GEN. J. R., Cleve- 
land 
McGRATH, REV. CHRISTOPHER C, 

Somerville, Mass. 
McGRATH, HON. JNO. F.. Waterbury, 

Conn. 
McGUIRE, FRANK (Radow & McGuire), 

New York City 
McKAY, REV. DR. ALEX. B., Phila., Pa. 



7i8 



THE STORY OF THE IRISH RACE 



McLaughlin, denis, Brooklyn 

McMAHON, JNO. J., Cleveland 
McMANUS, J. A., Gretna, Va. 
McMANUS, REV. MICHAEL T., Brook- 
line 
McMULLEN, HUGH, Cumberland, Md. 
McNAMARA, S. J., Brooklyn, N. Y. 
McQUEENY, MISS MARY F., New York 

City 
McVVHORTER, MRS. ALARY F., Chicago 
»»MacARTAIN, PADRAIC, Sterling City, 

Cal. 
♦•MacGUIRE, DR. CONSTANTINE J., SR., 
New York City 
MacNAMARA, THOS., JR., Young.stown. 

O. 
NAGLE, JNO. H., Hall of Records, New 

York City 
NAGLE, PATK. S., Kingfisher, Okla. 
••NALLY, EDWD. J. (Marconi Co.), New 
York City 
NASH, REV. JOHN J., D.D., BufTalo 
NOONAN, CHARLES, New York City 
OWEN ROE CLUB (per \Vm. Flood), 
New York City 
•*OWENS, REV. EUGENE. Buchtel, O. 
•*0'BOYLE, PATRICIO, Rosario de Santa 
I'e, Argentina 
O'BRADY, J AS., Arrecifes, Argentina 
O'BRIEN, C. D., St. Paul, Minn. 
O'BRIEN, REV. DANIEL, Buffalo 
O'BRIEN, REV. JAS. J., Somerville, Mass. 
O'BRIEN, THOS., Albany, N. Y. 
O'CONNELL, JOS. F., Boston 
O'CONNELL, REV. P. J., Cleveland 
••V^'CONNELL. HIS EMINENCE CAR- 
DINAL WM., Boston 
O'CONNELL, WM. J., Des Moines. la. 
O'CONNOR, REV. JAS. J., Pittsburgh 
O'CONNOR, REV. JEREMIAH, St. Paul 
O'CONNOR, REV. P. J., Pittsburgh 
O'DONNELL, MR. PATK. J., Cleveland 
••O'DONNELL, REV. R.. Alderbrook, N. Y. 
O'DOWD. LIAM, New York City 
O'DWYER, REV. C, O.M.I., International 

Falls, Minn. 
O'FARRELL, C. M. (Carson, Pirrie, Scott 

& Co.), Chicago 
O'FARRELL, SANTIAGO. Buenos Aires 
O'FLAHERTY, JAS. (Home News), The 
Bronx 
**0'GALLAGHER, FRANCIS B., Chicago 
O'GARA, REV. TIIOS. F., Chicago, 111. 
• O'KANE, FRANCIS, Phila., Pa. 
I O'KEEFE, P. J., Chicago 

O'KEEFFE, REV. D. J., Daytona, Fla. 
**0'LEARY, MISS MARY THERESA. Los 

Angeles 
•♦O'NEILL, FRANCIS, Chicago 

O'NEILL, REV. PATK. F., Phila., Pa. 
O'REILLY, VY. REV. M. J., CM., Syd- 
ney, Aus. 
O'REILLY, REV. P. J., Springfield; 111. 



O'ROURKE, REV. P. J., St. Louiss Mo. 
O'SHEA, REV. TIMOTHY E., Chicago 
OSLATTERY, REV. J. P., New Orleans 
O'SULLIVAN, REV. M.. St. Bridget's, 

Chicago 

O'TOOLE, MISS HELEN, Wilmington, Del. 

PADRAIC PEARSE BRANCH, F. O. I. F. 

(per Miss M. L. Brosnahan), Washington, 

B.C. 

/PAULIST FATHERS (per Rev. Thos. F. 

Burke), Chicago 
(PHELAN, SENATOR JAMES D., Wash- 
ington, D. C. 
POWER, RT. REV. MSGR. JAS. W., New 
York City 
**POWERS, REV. WM. F., Chelsea, Mass. 
PRICE, RICHARD, Jackson. Mich. 
PURCELL, REV. FRANCIS A., LL.D.. 

Chicago 
QUINN, JNO., Houtzdale, Pa. 
RAFFERTY, REV. MICHAEL J., Phila. 
REA. REV. THOS. R., McKeesport. Pa. 
REEVES, JAMES, New York City 
REGAN, JNO., New Bedford, Mass. 
REILLY. THOS. L., Meriden, Conn. 
^'REYNOLDS, REV. JNO., Brooklyn, N. Y. 
•-RING, REV. THOS. G., EucHd, O. 

ROCHE, JNO. L., International Falls, 

Minn. 
ROWLEY, THOS., Canton, 111. 
RUTTLEDGE, WM. L., Detroit, Mich. 
RYAN, JOHN D., New York City 
RYAN, JUDGE O'NEILL, St. Louis, Mo. 
RYAN. REV. WM. A., Dorchester, Mass. 
SARSFIELD CLUB (per M. O'Connor), 
New York City 
••SCANNELL, REV. PATK. J., Stoughton, 

Mass. 
**SHEA, JNO., Lawrence, Mass. 

SHERIDAN, REV. JNO. J., Syracuse, 
N. Y. 
••SHIELDS, MRS. HENRY GRATTAN, 

Flemington, N. J. 
•'SULLIVAN, JOHN, New Bedford, Mass. 
SULLIVAN, JNO. F., Brooklyn, N. Y. 
SCANLAN, JNO. N., Harvard Club, New 

York City 
SCANLAN, REV. P. J.. Chicago 
SCHMIDT, DR. O. L., Chicago 
SERVITE FATHERS (per Rev. Philip 

Burke), Chicago 
SEXTON, REV. FRANCIS J., Jersey City, 

N.J. 
SHANNON, REV. THOS. V., Chicago 
SHEEHAN, REV. FRANCIS J.. Phila., Pa. 
••SHEEHAN, REV. MICHAEL, Harper's 
Ferry, la. 
SHEEHAN, MISS MARY, Lenora Lake. 

Sask., Canada 
SHEWBRIDGE, REV. P. F., Chicago 
SISTERS OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD, 
Providence 



AN HONOR-ROLL 



719 



f SLATTERY, REV. LAWRENCE W., New- 
ton, Mass. 
SMITH, REV. JNO. TALBOT, Dobb's 
Ferry, N. Y. 
**SMITH, REV. JOS. F., Cleveland 
STAPLETON, REV. JAS., Detroit 
SUPPLE, RT. REV. MONS. PATK. J., 
Boston 
*'TAAFFE, M. (E. Henning, Inc.), Chicago, 

111. 
»*THORN, ADOLPH HERMANN, Milford, 
Mass. 
TORMEY, WALTER, Brookfield, Mo. 
TONER, REV. JOS., Pittsburgh 
TWOMEY, REV. MORTIMER E., So. 
Boston 
*»USHER, TIMOTEO, Santa Elena, Argen- 
tina 
VAHEY, JAS. H. (Vahey & Casson), Bos- 
ton 



VAN ANTWERP, RT. REV. FRANC7 

J., D.D., Detroit 
WALSH, REV. DANIEL, Buffalo, N. Y. 
WALSH, FRANK P., New York City 
WALSH, REV. JNO. J., Phila., Pa. 
/WALSH, SENATOR THOS. J., Montana 
**WALL, RT. REV. MSGR. FRANCIS II . 

New York City 
WHALEN, WM. J. (of P. H. Coney). 

Topeka. Kan. 
WHEELWRIGHT, MRS. C, Rocheste , 

N. Y. 
WHELAN, REV. JNO., Maggiolo, Arg=:i 

tina 
WHITE. THOS., Koppel, Pa. 
WHOLEY, JAMES, Providence 
**WOLF TONE CLUB (per Michael B. M.- 

Greal), New Haven 
WRENN, REV. FRANCIS, Akron. Iowa 



/ 



1. a 



(^yf^-/:. f 



Loc, 



